LIBRAF Hf CONGRESS. 

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iieli ,HS4 



UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, 



PATENTS 



AND THE USEFUL ARTS 



/ 

H. HOWSON. 







■ 'V 



\^ 



Yi 



Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1878, 

BY H. HOWSON, 

in the Office of the Librarian"of Congress, at Washington. 



Press : 

The Times Printing House, 

608 & 610 Chestnut Street, 

Philadelphia. 



TO THE 

HON. ELLIS SPEAR, 

(Commissioner of Patents,) 

This little volume is inscribed, as a mark of respect, 
by the author. 



PATENTS AND THE USEFUL ARTS. 

INTRODUCTION. 

If the reader feels inclined to smile at the title 
chosen for this little work, and to doubt the existence 
of any very intimate alliance between patents and 
the advancement of the useful arts, I ask him to fol- 
low me while I take a rapid survey of the rise and 
progress of those arts since the latter part of the reign 
of James I., and note their connection with patents. 

The reader need not be alarmed; I shall take 
long and rapid strides, and shall, as far as the tasky 
fbefore me will permit, avoid tedious historical par. 
ticulars and tiresome statistics ; and as I proceed shall 
make an effort to entertain the reader, hoping at the 
same time to impart information of an interesting 
character on a subject concerning which there has 
recently been much discussion among thinking men. 

I propose in the first instance to note in a sketchy 
and conversational way, and without any attempt at 
thoroughness of detail, some of the prominent steps in 
the history and progress of three controlling branches 
of industry, the steam-engine, and textile and iron 
manufactures, from the time I have mentioned to the 
year 1800 ; referring, as I proceed, to a few of the many 



8 Patents and the Useful Arts, 

patents which give us the best, and in many cases the 
only, clue to that progress. 

It has been deemed best to treat, in the outset, of 
the origin and growth of patent systems up to a time 
(the year 1800) when such systems had ceased to be 
experiments, and when their effect as stimulants of 
ingenuity had been determined. 

I propose in the second place to refer briefly and 
in very general terms to the progress of the industrial 
arts in our own country, and to its connection with 
patents from the year 1800 to the present time ; and 
shall conclude with a few remarks about inventors, 
the present condition and defects of our patent system, 
and shall venture to suggest how easily these defects 
may be remedied without detracting from the bene- 
ficial vitality of the system. 

I have only to hope that the reader who has the 
patience to peruse the following pages may conclude 
that patents and patent matters do not present so dry 
and uninteresting a subject as is generally supposed. 

H. H. 



Early Practical Science and Early Patents. 9 



EARLY PRACTICAL SCIENCE AND EARLY PATENTS. 

I SHALL not dwell long on the period which forms 
my starting-point, the reign of James I. 

In this reign lived two prominent men who were 
indirectly connected with patents: Lord Bacon, ''the 
wisest and brightest of men;" and the king himself, 
who, according to Macaulay, was alternately a ''buf- 
foon and a pedagogue." Bacon, the father of modern 
philosophy, taught the w^orld that science was no 
longer to be devoJ:ed to occult researches or to the 
amusement of the rich ; "that study, instead of employ- 
ing itself in wearisome and sterile speculations, should 
be engaged in mastering the secrets of nature and life, 
and applying them to human use." 

There were intellectual giants in those days, — 
Bacon, Galileo, Descartes, and other fathers of applied 
science. 

Queen Elizabeth had taken upon herself to grant, 
or rather to sell, patents of monopolies by the score, 
with the view of enriching her favorites ; to such an 
extent had this been carried, that iron, coal, vine- 
gar, oil, saltpetre, lead, starch, yarns, skins, leather, 
glass, and other commodities, could be purchased only 
at most exorbitant prices. 



lo Patents and the Useful Arts, 

These practices were opposed by the House of 
Commons with such urgency and determination that 
the Queen had the good sense to ^abandon the prerog- 
atives wbich she had assumed, — a wise example, 
which was lost on her successor, James, whose profli- 
gacy, unjust taxation, and sale of monopolies, insulted 
Parliament, and raised in the House of Commons a 
sturdy opposition. 

As the barons of 121 5 compelled the tyrannical 
John to sign the Magna Charta, so the Commons com- 
pelled King James to assent to the statute abolishing 
monopolies. 

This famous statute declared " all monopolies 
theretofore granted, or thereafter to be granted, of or 
for the sole buying, selling, making, working, or using 
of anything within the realm, contrary to law, and 
utterly void and of no effect." 

But from this wholesale condemnation the act 
excepted "letters patent, for limited periods, ot the 
sole working or making of any manner of new manu- 
factures within the realm, to the true and first inventor 
or inventors of such manufactures, which others at 
the time of making such letters and grants shall not 
use." 



This mention of patents of monopoly in the same 
statute with patents of invention was an unfortunate 
incident for generations of inventors. It engendered in 
the minds of the public an association of patents 
with monopolies, which prevails to this day ; and as 
more or less odium is attached to the word '' monopoly " 



Early Practical Science and Early Patents. 1 1 

wherever the Enghsh language is spoken, the word 
"patent" shares a part of that odium. 

It is a pity that the framers of the statute of 
monopohes did not abandon the word "patent" in refer- 
ring to the document which estabhshes the inventor's 
temporary right to the production of his brains, and 
adopt some other name. It is to be regretted that in 
after years the framers of our act of 1790 did not 
invent a new name. 

It is too late now to change it, but it is not too 
late to denounce the every-day association of patents 
with monopolies. 

Whenever a legislator denounces our patent sys- 
tem, he always alludes to patents as monopolies, 
using this word in its most odious sense ; whereas the 
truth is that a patentee is paid by the people for the 
services which he renders. If his invention meets the 
public demands, the public buy it ; very rarely he gets 
more than it is worth, generally less. 

Our neighbor has a well-stocked farm, the prod- 
ucts of which are due to his industry and intelligence. 
He takes the products to the market and offers them 
for sale to the public ; he is as much of a monopolist 
of these products as the inventor is of the results of 
his intellectual labors, his patent. 

Let us have no more of this illegitimate alliance 
between patents and monopolies. 

Before I leave the times of James I., who appears 
to have been engaged during his whole reign in sharp- 
ening the axe which removed his son's head, and in 
preparing the Anglo-Saxon mind for the abandon- 



12 Patents and the Useful Arts. 

ment of all ideas of the divine right of kings, I must 
not forget the sturdy men who, to use Canning's words, 
"turned to the new world to redress the balance of 
the old," and landed on the barren coasts of New 
England two hundred and fifty years ago. Their 
descendants, living under a liberal government, and 
protected by a wise patent system, have startled the 
world with their ingenuity, have contributed to the 
welfare and convenience of mankind by their endless 
inventions, and, with the many ingenious and enter- 
prising men of other parts of our country, are destined 
to endow the United States with manufacturing 
supremacy, if unwise patent legislation does not 
remove the incentive to invent. 



Let us pass to the year 1660 and to the rei^n of 
Charles II. 

"Bacon had sown the good seed in sluggish soil 
and in ungenial season. He had not expected an 
early crop, and in his last testam^ent hadL solemnly 
bequeathed his fame to the next age." 

" During a whole generation his philosophy had, 
amidst tumults, wars and prosecutions, been slowly 
ripening in a few well-constituted minds." 

In the year 1660 the Royal Society, "destined to 
be the chief agent in a long series of glorious and 
salutary reforms, began to exist, and in a few months 
experimental science became all the mode." 

"The spirit of Francis Bacon was abroad. There 
was a strong persuasion that the whole world was full 



Early Practical Science and Early Patents. 13 

of secrets of high moment to the happiness of man, 
and that man had, by his Maker, been entrusted with 
the key which, rightly used, would give access to 
them." 

"There was at the same time a conviction that in 
physics it was impossible to arrive at the knowledge 
of the general laws, except by the careful observation 
of particular facts." 

Some of the early investigations of the Royal 
Society were of curious character. The production 
of perfect sea-fowl from barnacles, as described and 
illustrated in Girard's Herbalist, in 1636, and the 
fish that turns to the wind when suspended by a thread, 
were solemnly discussed. 

The question was raised as to w^hether a given 
quantity of water would weigh more with a fish in it 
than without the fish ; and after a heated discussion, 
one member suggested the advisability of determining 
the question by the aid of a pair of scales, a bucket of 
water, and a fish. Practical man ! he should have, 
flourished in more practical times. 

It became the fashion with the nobility and gentry 
and even for the king, to attend the meetings of the 
Royal Society at Gresham College. 

The old gossip Pepys, who was to be found wher- 
ever people of fashion congregated, gives us in his 
Diary some glimpses of the proceedings of the Royal 
Society at Gresham^ College. 

He tells us how the king, Charles H., "mightily 
laughed" because the members, on one occasion, 
"spent their time in the weighing of ayre, and doing 
nothing else, while they sat." 



14 Patents and the Useful Arts. 

On another occasion he went with the fashion- 
ables to see an experiment with a new musical instru- 
ment "which played so badly and harsh that it would 
never do, and after three hours' stay could not be fixed 
in tune." On another occasion he refers to a discourse 
on witches, which, he says, "was well writ, but not 
very convincing." 

If we feel inclined to laugh at some of the early 
proceedings of the Royal Society, let. us bear in mind 
that, a century later, the wisest men in Europe were 
humbugged by the arch impostor Cagliostro ; that 
there are to-day thousands of firm believers in the 
sacred gold plates, which Joe Smith, the Mormon, 
declared he had received from an angel. We can- 
not well afford to laugh at our ancestors, for, in these 
days, believers in impossible motors and the mate- 
rialization of spirits are quite common. 

While the king laughed at what he looked upon 
as the antics of silly philosophers, at the meetings of 
the Royal Society, there were serious men at work 
there on serious things, — great men, such as Newton, 
W>en, Flamsted, Boyle, and many others, who, in 
obedience to Lord Bacon's teachings, laid the founda- 
tion for that progress in the useful arts which was soon 
to startle the world. 

In the times of which I am writing, literature had 
reached an exalted condition, for Shakespeare, Bacon 
and Milton had written, the fine arts, painting, sculp- 
ture and architecture had flourished ; but there was to be 
a new phase of society, in which the efforts of learned 
men were to be directed to the practical development 



Early Practical Science and Early Patents. 15 

of science for the well-being of mankind and the 
rapid advancement of civilization, and the dawn of 
this new era was signalized by the first meetings, in 
1660, of the Royal Society in the little lecture-room in 
Gresham Street. 

But what has all this to do with patents, the reader 
may say ? 

Among those who attended the meetings of this 
association were several patentees, two of whom are 
better remembered at this day than the rest, — Prince 
Rupert and the Marquis of Worcester ; the former a 
cousin of the King, a brave soldier and a bad general, 
but for whose rashness Charles I. might have turned 
the world back on its hinges, saving his head and 
recovering his throne. 

Prince Rupert spent the last and most useful 
years of his life in practical experiments. He was the 
inventor of mezzotint engraving; and he obtained a 
patent, the one hundred and sixty-first under the 
statute of monopolies, for the manufacture of steel, 
and a second patent to enable him to swear his work- 
men to secrecy, — for the government at that time had 
not adopted the true policy of compelling an inventor 
to disclose his invention before granting a patent, and 
hence the efforts of Prince Rupert in this important 
manufacture have been lost to the world. 

A much more prominent man as an inventor was 
the Marquis of Worcester, the author of the "Century of 
Inventions," published in 1663. Mr. Dircks, the emi- 
nent biographer of the Marquis, says ''he was the first 
to evoke that Titanic power which through successive 



1 6 Patents and the Useful Arts. 

improvements, consequent on the accumulated inge- 
nuity of two hundred years, has given to the present 
age the modern steam-engine." 

Mr. Holt, formerly Commissioner of Patents, in 
his decision in the Goodyear extension case said : ''On 
all the hearthstones of the civilized world, for thou- 
sands of years, the kettle had boiled, and lifted its lid 
by the power of its steam ; yet for none had this seem- 
ingly trite and ever-recurring incident been significant, 
to none had it announced that measureless power of 
which it was the humble but distinct exponent. At 
length it caught the eye of a lonely student of nature, 
a prisoner in the Tower of London (the Marquis of 
Worcester) ; and in the soil of his prolific mind it 
proved the rapidly expanding germ of that steam- 
engine whose triumphs have changed the social, 
political and commercial aspects of the globe." 

Worcester's patent was the one hundred and 
thirty-first under the statute of monopolies, and was 
granted February 8, 1661, for a rather incongruous 
collection of inventions. 



Inventors and Their Motives. 17 



11. 



INVENTORS AND THEIR MOTIVES. 

It will be noted that these early originators, the 
most prominent inventors of the times in which they 
lived, were not idle speculators, like the alchemists and 
astrologers, content with observing the results of their 
efforts; they were not vain men content with the 
notoriety due to the development of their inventions. 
Doubtless sensitive enough as to their claims to origi- 
nality, they looked beyond all this : they looked to the 
pecuniary reward due them from the public which 
profited by their intellectual efforts. 

Let us stand for a mom^ent in the English House 
of Commons, in the year 1875. ^ patent abolitionist 
has the floor, and he is declaring that ''notoriety is 
a sufficient reward for inventors," — a silly, short- 
sighted remark for a legislator to make in these 
enlightened days : a remark only equaled in stupidity 
by that of the Dutch politician, who declared, a few 
years ago, that patents might be serviceable enough in 
such countries as the United States and England, but 
were useless in a country which had reached such a 
state of perfection as Holland. 

The English member of Parliament should have 
gone a little farther, and told us how to keep men 
alive on notoriety, as a diet. 



1 8 Patents and the Useful Arts, 

There never was a true inventor or originator who 
was content with glory as his sole reward ; there never 
will be such an inventor. 

There are records of instances in which men, with 
a profusion of sentiment and ostentation, have dedi- 
cated alleged inventions to the public ; but a close 
investigation of such cases will always bring to light 
one of two things, — either the claim of the giver to the 
invention was based on a very flimsy foundation or 
the invention was worth nothing. 

True inventors are practical men, not dreamers, — 
men who put their ideas into definite and useful shape. 
This always costs much time and labor, and generally 
— if not always — money. Such men, therefore, cannot 
afford to content themselves with '' glory" as the reward 
of their labors ; they look for something much more 
substantial. With them invention means work, very 
serious time and thought consuming work, in which 
they are sustained by the hope of future profit, propor- 
tioned to their present expense. 

It is not with those men alone whom we know as 
inventors that this is the case ; it is the same with all 
true originators. The author who invented as many 
original characters as any author before him, Charles 
Dickens, was quite as sensitive about the money value 
of his works as about his claim to their originality. 

The artist does not paint pictures for reputation 
alone, he looks for remuneration commensurate with 
his reputation. 

Ask the new composer how he feels on the night 
when the success of his new opera is assured. He will 



Inventors and Their Motives P 19 

first express his gratification at the reputation he has 
acquired ; but his second thoughts will be directed to 
his family, and to the additional comforts which his 
sudden reputation assures them. 

Who ever heard of a general so tickled with the 
success of his ingenious tactics, or a member of Con- 
gress so delighted with the originality of his speech, as 
to forget to demand his pay ? 

It has been alleged by those who have acquired a 
habit of denouncing patents, that inventors will con- 
tinue to invent, patents or no patents. If these men 
mean that inventors will continue to think, and that 
visions of new things will continue to haunt the minds 
of originators in the absence of prospective rewards, I 
agree with them ; but if they mean that solid inven- 
tions, by which alone the country can be benefited, 
will continue to be made in the absence of a prospect 
of reward to the inventor, I say that these men are 
endowed with too limited a knowledge of human nature 
to give an opinion worth listening to. 

Thoughts of new things, visions of original ideas, 
always existed and always will exist in the minds of 
originators ; but these cannot be converted into inven- 
tions without remuneration. 

The inventors of to-day are actuated by precisely 
the same feelings as were Prince Rupert and the 
Marquis of Worcester two hundred years ago ; they 
look to the reward to be acquired through the medium 
of their patents. 

We shall see presently what an important part 
the English patent system, bad enough as it was, 
2 



20 Patents a7id the Usefiil Arts. 

played in encouraging inventors, and stimulating the 
progress of the useful arts, and how the inventors of 
our own country have outstripped all others, owing to 
the most just and liberal patent-system in the world. 

It would be well for our legislators, who feel a 
disposition to tinker the patent laws, to look carefully 
into all this ; for any fatal wounding of the system 
due to under-estimation of the intellectual labor 
of our inventors will be a blow at the progress of 
our industries, and at the advancement of our civiliza- 
tion. 

A nation in which progress of the industrial arts 
has ceased, is going backwards ; if we want our 
national industrial prosperity to continue, we must 
have new inventions ; and to get new inventions we 
must pay for them, as we must pay for everything 
worth having ; and the payment we make to the inventor 
in the shape of a patent is the fairest of all pay- 
ments. 



The Steam-Engine — Early Patentees. 21 



III. 



THE STEAM-ENGINE — EARLY PATENTEES. 

Let us turn to the reign of William III., i 
1701. James II., the last, and perhaps the worst, of 
the Stuarts, had been driven out of the country to make 
way for a man of brains, who became the head of the 
government under a constitution, which was placed 
on a firm basis. 

One of the most prominent inventors of this reign 
was Thomas Savery, whose patent " for raising water 
and giving motion to millwork by the impellent force 
of fire, useful for draining mines, serving towns with 
water, and working all kinds of mills in cases where 
there is neither water nor constant wind," had been 
granted July 25, 1698. 

Savery was a man of great ingenuity, energy, and 
daring. His predecessor, the Marquis of Worcester, 
had been the victim of religious persecution, had been 
robbed of his estates, hooted at -as a madman, and 
imprisoned in the Tower of London. But Savery lived 
in better times ; although subjected to sneers and 
insults, he had the Royal Society, with Newton as presi- 
dent, and even the king himself, to encourage him. 
His efforts resulted in practical success, his steam- 



22 Patents and the Useful Arts. 

engine did the promised duty ; and this was, of course, 
followed by the detractions of the envious, and the 
plundering schemes of pirates. But his courage sur- 
mounted all obstacles ; and the name of Savery has 
been handed down to us as the most ingenious, per- 
severing, and successful inventor of his day. 

Human nature has not changed since Savery's 
time. The inventor of to-day, whatever his talents may 
be, must be enterprising, daring, and self-asserting, if 
he wishes to succeed. 



Let us cross over -to France, and note what was 
doing there in the way of steam-engineering in these 
times, under Louis the XIV., concerning whose char- 
acter there has always existed much difference of 
opinion. Buckle in his " History of Civilization " 
says: " The reign of Louis XIV. must be utterly con- 
demned if it is tried even by the lowest standard 
of morals, of honor, or of interest. A coarse and 
unbridled profligacy, followed by the meanest and 
most groveling superstition, characterized his private 
life." 

That the useful arts could make no material prog- 
ress under a warlike, priest-ridden despot is demon- 
strated by what we know of the life of the celebrated 
inventor Papin, a contemporary of, and a much more 
scientific man than Savery. Papin was, undoubtedly, 
the inventor of the safety-valve ; and recent investiga- 
tions have brought to light the fact that he was in 
advance of Savery in many particulars. 



The Steam- Engine — Early Patentees. 23 

But where was the encouragement in France for 
such a man as Papin ? Artists, and literary men, and 
the makers of pretty toys, were encouraged by the 
lofty patronage of the king and nobility, but solid 
improvements in the useful arts were neglected. Such 
things as patents were unknown. 

Papin visited England for a short time, and 
attended the meetings of the Royal Society, after 
which he' returned to France to be driven out by reli- 
gious persecution, and to seek refuge in Germany, 
where he received more encouragement, and where, 
in 1690, he published his first work, in which he pro- 
posed steam as a universal motive-power. Papin vv^as 
not only a great inventor, but, like all truly great 
men, was honest and candid ; for he gave to Sa- 
very the credit of being an independent and original 
inventor. 

Had Papin continued to live in England, where, 
in his time, men were being taught to think and act 
for themselves, where men of wealth and position 
were actively engaged in fostering practical experi- 
ments, and where inducements were held out to invent- 
ors, in the form of patents, the world might not have 
been compelled to wait as long as it did for the per- 
fected steam-engine. 

An event occurred in this reign which had much 
to do with the progress of the useful arts in other 
countries. Many of the most industrious citizens were 
driven out of the country by religious persecution, 
and, seeking refuge in foreign lands, there introduced 
useful arts with which they were familiar, and laid 



24 Patents and the Useful Arts. 

the foundation for subsequent manufacturing enter- 
prises based on patents. 

It is only in countries where freedom of .thought 
and action and a spirit of independence prevail, that 
there can be any material progress in the useful arts, 
and that patents can properly perform their duty 
of encouraging such progress. 



Returning to England, let us pass on rapidly from 
the time of Savery's patent (1698) to the year 1800, 
when Watt retired from active business life. Watt, 
whose name cannot be written without a feeling of 
profound respect and veneration, had, in 1774, sold 
two-thirds of the interest in his patents to Matthew 
Boulton, of Birmingham, and with the latter estab- 
lished the celebrated Soho Iron Works, where his 
crowning improvement, a steam-engine to drive 
machinery, was made in 1782. 

Watt was a scholar, an eminent mathematician, 
and had the rare faculty of contemplating and carry- 
ing out the most gigantic schemes, and at the same 
time paying the closest attention to the most minute 
details ; one year inventing and patenting the letter 
copying-press which is to be found to-day in all our 
offtces, and the next year patenting the device which 
converted the single-acting engine of Savery and New- 
comen into the double-acting engine. 

Between the year 1698, when Savery patented his 
invention, and the year 1800, when the steam-motor 
of Watt had ceased to be a novelty, forty-three 



The Steam- Engine— Early Patentees. 25 

patents for steam-engines, including the four patents 
of Watt, were granted. Of these patents, "over thirty 
were granted after that of Watt, within a period of 
twenty years. 

Among the patentees we shall find names which 
will never be forgotten. Newcomen, Brindley, the 
father of civil engineering ; Hornblower, Bramah, the 
inventor of the lock which bears his name, the hydrau- 
lic press, and other inventions, covered by seven- 
teen patents, independent of that for a steam-engine ; 
Cartwright, the inventor of the power-loom ; Murray, 
Murdock, the inventor of illumination by coal-gas ; 
and many others of note. 

I shall not forget our own early inventors, Oliver 
Evans, Fulton, Fitch, Ramsey, etc. I shall have 
occasion to refer to these celebrated men when I come 
to treat of the progress of the industrial arts in our 
own country. 

If we want to know the history of the steam- 
engine prior to 1800, wx must look for it among the 
forty-three patents. There was not a single notable 
improvement, prior to that time, which did not form 
the subject of a patent ; there is no improvement up 
to the present date which has not been patented in 
some part of the world. 

We cannot disconnect the history of the progress 
of the industrial arts and modern civilization from 
the history of the steam-engine ; we cannot separate 
the history of the steam-engine from that of the 
patents which record the steps of improvement. 



26 Patents and the Useful Arts. 

It has been at times the fashion for some of our 
poUticians, when historical events of the old world are 
referred to as precedents, to declare that we are a new- 
set of people, not to be guided by old-world ideas. 
This may do very well at election time ; but what our 
future is to be depends upon the use we make of the 
lessons which the history of the past affords. We may 
be different from the rest of mankind in some particu- 
lars, we may have more freedom of action, more 
opportunities for exercising that freedom than the 
citizens of other countries ; but there is one thing that 
cannot be changed, it must always remain the same, 
and that is human nature. 

It is not in the nature of man to act without 
motives, it is not in his nature to carry out his new 
inventions without incentives. 



We must not suppose that these early inventors 
of the steam-engine had an easy life of it. On the con- 
trary, history exhibits them in the light of brave and 
enduring men, constantly battling against the prej- 
udices of the ignorant on the one hand, and the cove- 
tousness of pirates on the other. 

The prejudice against patents — and every patent 
cost a small fortune in those days — was greater than it 
is now, and the courts showed more or less of this prej- 
udice, for the odious word "monopoly " stuck to the 
word " patent." 

Several years of the life of Watt, who had done 
so much for the welfare and prosperity of his country. 



The Steam- Engine — Early Patentees, 27 

were embittered by ligitation to which he was com- 
pelled to resort with the view of sustaining his rights. 

The Cornish miners, who, of all others, received 
the greatest benefit from the Watt engine, made a 
systematic and persevering attempt to deprive the 
firm of Boulton & Watt of their patent and its emolu- 
ments. The battle lasted for seven years, and to the 
infinite credit of the courts, ended in the patent being 
sustained. 

To jeer at an inventor's efforts in the first 
instance, and to steal his invention when it suc- 
ceeded, appears to have been the common practice 
in the days of which I am writing ; and this phase of 
human nature, at least, has not been entirely changed 
in our times by our new institutions. 



28 Patents and the Useful Arts. 



IV. 



TEXTILE MACHINERY — EARLY INVENTORS AND 
PATENTEES. 

Let us now take a hasty glance at the history of 
textile manufactures up to the year 1800. 

Most of us have seen Hogarth's series of pictures 
illustrative of industry and idleness. In one picture 
there is an apprentice, a rather nice-looking young 
man, who may have been industrious enough, but 
who has a decidedly unpleasant smirk on his face ; 
and a pug- nosed idle apprentice who is performing 
the feat of going to sleep in a position which would 
puzzle a mountebank. 

It maybebad taste, but I have very little vene- 
ration for Hogarth's pictures. This picture, however, 
has one merit, — it illustrates very distinctly the appli- 
ances used in Hogarth's time for the manufacture of 
textile fabrics. 

There is a crude loom, little more perfect than 
the old Hindoo machine. The apprentice holds the 
shuttle in one hand, preparatory to throwing it along 
the lathe between the warp threads, — for it was the 
practice then to throw the shuttle first with one hand 
and then with the other. On the floor are a crude 
spinning-wheel and an equally crude reel. 



Textile Machmery — Early Inventors, Etc. 29 

It may surprise the reader to know that this 
primitive mode of operating a shuttle was the only 
mode up to 1733, when John Kay patented the " fly- 
ing-shuttle, " operated by a picker-stick, which 
doubled the weaving capacity of the loom. 

The Spitalsfields operatives resisted the use of 
ilying-shuttles. The Yorkshire clothiers adopted 
the inyention, but, instead of paying for it, organized 
the " Shuttle Club, " which ruined Kay by expensive 
law and chancery suits, — a contemptible proceeding, 
you will say, but not entirely unknown in our own 
times, in our own country. 

During the short space of sixty-seven years, from 
1734 to 1800, there was a wonderful revolution in tex- 
tile manufactures ; and the history of this revolution, 
which was inaugurated by the flying-shuttle of John 
Kay, is the history of patents for textile machinery, 
granted during that time. Kay was ruined, but he 
was an irrepressible inventor. He obtained four 
patents relating to textile inventions ; his experi- 
mental machines for carding and spinning were 
destroyed by a mob, and Kay barely escaped with 
his life, to France, where he died in poverty. 

The primitive spinning-machine shown in 
Hogarth's picture was in common use up to 1769, 
when Arkwright had perfected his spinning-frame ; 
but before this time several attempts had been made 
to spin more than one thread at the same time. 
Lewis Paul procured three patents : one in 1730, and 
another in 1758, for spinning; and a third, in 1748, 
for carding. 



30 Pate7its and the Useful Arts. 

Paul, although his machines did not result in 
practical success, appe_ars to have made considerable 
money by selling licenses ; for he lived in handsome 
style near London, where he died in 1759. ^^ have 
heard of peddlers, in our own times, selling licenses 
for patented machines, which proved to be of little or 
no value. 

The invention of the spinning-jenny by Har- 
graves (patented 1770) was a memorable event in 
the history of manufacturing industry ; his first rude 
jenny, for spinning eight threads at one time, was 
completed in 1767 ; a mob of spinners broke into his 
cottage, destroyed his machine, and compelled him 
to fly for his life. He went to Nottingham ; took out 
his patent in 1770; an association of manufacturers 
opposed him on the ground that he had sold machines 
before his patent was granted ; he continued to 
make a bare living for the remainder of his life. 

Arkwright was a poor barber, occupying, in 
Bolton, a cellar, over which was a rude sign, announ- 
cing " a clean shave for a penny ;" but this poor bar- 
ber became the enormously wealthy Sir Richard Ark- 
wright. He made a spinning-machine at Preston, 
where, in abject poverty, and almost in rags, he 
undertook to exhibit the machine in the Town Hall, 
but the ominous warning of a dangerous mob com- 
pelled him to escape with his machine to Nottingham, 
where he had the good fortune to meet an enter- 
prising business man, Mr. Strutt, with whom he 
formed a partnership ; and this enabled him to 
obtain his first patent, in 1769, for spinning cotton 



Textile Machinery — Early Inventors, Etc. 31 

with rollers. This was the same year in which Watt 
took out his first patent. More than ^100,000 were 
spent in perfecting the machine, which exercised an 
extraordinary influence in the development of textile 
manufactures, and laid the foundation of the invent- 
or's enormous fortune. 

As the success of Watt was due, in a great 
measure, to his association with Boulton, so that of 
Arkwright may be, in part, attributed to his partner, 
Strutt. 

It will be well for our inventors not to forget the 
example, which the lives of Watt and Arkwright 
present, — of the advantages accruing from associa- 
tion with men of good business qualifications ; and 
it will be well for legislators not to forget that even if 
inventors might continue to originate, without the 
inducement of patents, capitalists, less enthusiastic 
than inventors, are not likely, without some such 
inducement, to devote their capital and their busi- 
ness capacity to the development and manufacture 
of new inventions. 

Crompton was a specimen of a very accomplished 
but a decidedly wrong-headed inventor. , He had 
nearly completed his mule which was to supersede 
Arkwright's machine for spinning fine and even yarn, 
when the attack of a mob compelled him to hide his 
machine in a garret. He soon worked it success- 
fully, however, and sold his yarn at high prices ; 
but this success was the beginning of his ruin. He 
thought he could get along without a patent by work- 
ing his machine in secret. He became suspicious of 



32 Pate7tts and the Useful Arts. 

those around him, hved an unhappy hfe, and finally, 
with a singular want of shrewdness, agreed to give man- 
ufacturers the possession of his secret on promise of 
payment of a sum set opposite the name of each sub- 
scriber. Several of these subscribers, it must be said, 
to their utter disgrace, refused to pay ; and he received 
but about three hundred dollars for an invention by 
which some of these rascals netted half a million and 
more. 

, It was too late now to obtain a patent, and 
Crompton, in a fit of exasperation, chopped his 
machine to pieces, and indignantly refused several 
lucrative positions. Subsequently the manufacturers 
subscribed two thousand dollars for him ; and finally 
the government awarded him twenty-five thousand dol- 
lars for an invention which. Sir Robert Peel officially 
declared, had added twenty millions of pounds to the 
wealth of the country. 

The power-loom commenced by the Rev. Dr. 
Cartwright, and completed by Horrocks, soon fol- 
lowed the mule ; but here I must stop this hasty sketch, 
for we have arrived at the year 1800. Up to this year, 
from 1733, seventy-two patents were granted for 
spinning, and thirty-five for weaving, while many other 
patents were granted which had a direct or indirect 
bearing on these two main branches of textile 
manufactures. 

Dr. Wright speaking of Manchester, in 1758, 
says : " In the beginning of this century it was a 
small, mean, dirty village, now it is a large, splendid 
and clean town, containing fifty thousand inhabitants." 



Textile Machinery — Early Inventors, Etc, 33- 

This, you will bear in mind, was before the date of 
Hargrave's and Arkwright's patents. In 1800, there 
wxre 12,547 houses, and 84,000 inhabitants in Man- 
chester; and in 1871, 476,000 inhabitants. 

Liverpool, in 1785, imported five bales of cotton; 
in 1787, 100 bales; and 100,000 in 1801, and the 
average yearly importation is now 2,000,000 bales. 
From an insignificant village in 1785, Liverpool 
has become one of the great cities of the world, 
with 500,000 inhabitants. Is there any one bold 
enough to deny that the patented inventions of Ark- 
wright, Watt and others, had anything to do with this 
wonderful progress ? Will any one deny the all- 
important part which the patented cotton-gin of our 
own inventor, Whitney, played in building up these 
great cities ? 

The reader, on perusing the above hasty sketch 
of the lives of a few of the most prominent 
inventors of textile machinery, will conclude that they 
were infamously treated by the manufacturers, 
and this was very true. Whitney experienced the 
same sort of treatment in our own country. 

It was doubtless in this time — that is, prior to 1800 
— that the word " poor" became intimately connected 
with the word " inventor," and it has stuck to him 
ever since. 

To-day, in our own country, one set of men point 
to the inventor as poor, using the word in accents of 
pity or contempt ; another set of men declare that he 
is a monopolist, and he is thus converted into the ex- 
traordinary hybrid, a " poor monopolizing inventor''' 



34 Patents and the Useful Arts, 

A true inventor may be poor enough, but he is 
quite as happy, often happier, than his plodding 
neighbor, into whose head a new idea never crept. 
The man who treats an inventor with contempt 
because he is an inventor, or because he is poor, is to 
l3e pitied. But inventors are not always poor, there 
are thousands of well-to-do inventors; and we ought 
to rejoice in the fact, for when we see a true inventor 
making money, we may rest assured that the public 
has made a good bargain. 

I am glad to record the fact that the Lancashire 
and Yorkshire manufacturers acquired better and 
more prudent feelings towards inventors, after the 
time treated of in the foregoing sketch. Hielmann, a 
most ingenious Frenchman, had expended a large 
fortune in experiments at Mulhausen, and, becoming 
impoverished, settled in Manchester, where he invented 
and patented the celebrated combing machine which 
bears his name ; six Manchester firms purchased the 
patent for cotton for one hundred and fifty thousand 
■dollars, and a manufacturer of Leeds paid one- hun- 
dred thousand dollars for using it upon flax. 

There are to-day as many prosperous inventors 
in Manchester and the neighborhood, in propor- 
tion to the population, as in any other place in the 
world ; they occupy high social positions, and the sons 
and grandsons of the prominent inventors who have 
passed away take as much pride in their origin as 
any nobleman in the land. 



Patents for Manufacture of Iron and Steel. 35 



V. 



EARLY PATENTS FOR THE MANUFACTURE OF IRON 
AND STEEL. 

A GREAT inventor died in the year 1800, — Henry 
Cort, the father of the Enghsh iron manufactures. 

In 1770 the quahty of Enghsh wrought iron was 
so inferior that it was customary to import it from 
Russia ; and the manufacturers in that country, behev- 
ing that the Enghsh could not carry on their manufac- 
tures without it, raised the price enormously. 

All this was changed by Cort, whose patent for 
" preparing, welding and working various sorts of iron, 
and of reducing the same into uses by machinery," was 
granted in 1783. 

The production of iron in England, at the date of 
Cort's invention, was about 90,000 tons ; in 1820, 
400,000 tons ; and in 1863, 4,000,000 tons, — a wonder- 
ful development, due mainly to the invention of Cort. 

Huntsman, the inventor of cast-steel, was 
another instance of a man trying to work his invention 
in secret, without the protection of a patent. 

He was a very persevering man, his experiments 
being continued for many years before he succeeded, 
in 1740. The cutlers at first would not buy Hunts- 
man's steel, so he found a profitable market abroad, 
where such superior cutlery was made, that the jealous 
3 



36 Patents and the Useful Arts. 

English manufacturers tried to obtain a government 
order to prevent the exportation of steel, — which, to 
the credit of those in power, was peremptorily refused. 
His w^orkmen were pledged to secrecy, strangers were 
carefully excluded from the works, and the whole of 
the steel was melted during the night, and this was 
continued for some time. 

One cold night a wretched-looking beggar asked 
permission of the workmen to allow him to rest in a 
warm place, and they charitably complied with the 
request. 

The beggar was an iron-founder in disguise, the 
secret was out, and in a few months other cast-steel 
works were established. 

Thirty-five English patents for the manufacture of 
iron and steel were granted prior to the year 1800. 
Space will not allow me to allude even to those of 
importance in detail, but the wonderful history of 
the progress of iron manufactures, prior to that date, 
cannot be written without reference to these patents. 



I have given a very cursory review of three lead- 
ing branches of industry, up to the year 1800, and this 
will suffice to show the intimate relation of patents with 
the progress of the useful arts, and the advancement 
of civilization in England up to that time ; if we look 
into the history of any other branch of manufacture, 
we shall meet with the same results. 

From the beginning of the reign of Charles II., 
(1660) up to and including the year 1800, 2,334 patents 



Patents for Manufacture of Iron and Steel. 37 

were granted in England, but these patents did not 
increase at a uniform ratio during the period of one 
hundred and forty years ; during the first half of the 
time, that is up to 1730, 397, and during the second 
half 1937, patents were granted. Patents increased in 
number as the rate of progress of the useful arts and 
civilization increased. 



38 Patents and the Useful Arts. 



VI. 



EARLY PATENTS AND MANUFACTURES IN THE 
UNITED STATES. 

Let us now take a glance at the progress of the 
industrial arts in our own country. 

" As early as 1660, the mother country, jealous of 
the increasing prosperity of her children across the 
Atlantic, began to hamper their trade with navigation 
acts, selfishly designed to compel the commerce of the 
Americans to pass exclusively through English hands. 
The House of Commons in 17 19 declared that erect- 
ing any manufactories in the Colonies, tended to lessen 
their dependence on Great Britain, and laws were 
accordingly enacted for preventing the working of 
iron and steel in the Colonies." 

The termination of the seven years' war, 1769, 
left the Colonies poor and exhausted, for their con- 
tributions in men and money had been large ; the 
population at this time was estimated at 2,500,000, 
of which 500,000 were negro slaves. 

"The general characteristics of the people were 
intelligence, industry, and a high degree of moral and 
religious culture. The spirit of political freedom was 
strongly developed among the Colonists, and republi- 
can ideas and feelings, transmitted from the hands 
of the Commonwealth in England, were widely dif- 



Patents and Manufactures m United States. 39 

fused, but trade and manufactures were systematically 
restricted for the selfish benefit of England." 

We all know what followed. 

On July 4th, 1776, Great Britain had become to the 
United States a foreign country. On September 3, 
1783, the independence of the United States was 
acknowledged by England. On March 4, 1789, was 
adopted the Constitution, a clause in which empowered 
Congress to '' promote the progress of science and 
the useful arts, by securing for limited times to 
authors and inventors the exclusive right to their 
respective wTitings and discoveries," and pursuant to 
this authority Congress in 1790 passed the " x\ct to 
promote the progress of the useful arts." 



In England, from the Statute of Monopolies until 
very recent times, a patent has always been looked 
upon in the light of a special grant by the Govern- 
ment, a sort of privilege or indulgence, but the wise 
framers of our Constitution took a very different view 
of the subject. The history of the past had taught 
them that, to promote the progress of the useful arts, 
the inventors must be encouraged by prospective 
remuneration. 

When monopolies wxre abolished there was an 
excellent opportunity to get clear of the word "patent " 
and its odious connection with the word "monopoly," 
and the framers of our Patent Act of 1790 had the 
same opportunity, but they did not avail themselves of 
it; they adopted the old words patent and grant. 



40 Patents and the Useful Arts. 

neither of which words appear in the above-quoted 
clause of the Constitution. 

An inventor does not ask for a gift or gratuity ; if 
he has made a useful invention, if it is new, he is 
entitled to his patent, and the Government must hand 
him the title deed, an act which we call granting a 
patent ; there is no gift about the transaction, the title 
is his by right, but like the title to any other property 
it is liable to be questioned. 

The words granting a patent imply a species of 
Government patronage, and have induced many inven- 
tors, who are ignorant of the true spirit of our patent 
laws, to think that they are set apart as special pets 
of the Government, and a portion of the public and 
many politicians entertain the same notion and raise 
the cry of monopoly. 

The Government hands the title to the inventor 
not as a matter of personal favor, but as a matter of 
just public policy. 



It was not to be expected that manufactures 
should flourish in our country, during the closing years 
of the last century. 

The selfish policy of England during our colo- 
nial days, the exhaustive war against the French and 
the still more exhaustive war of the Revolution, all 
contributed to prevent the establishment of perma- 
nent manufactures. 

Iron had been manufactured on a small scale in 
Massachusetts, in 1732, but the iron used for ship- 



Patents and Mamifactures in United States. 41 

ping, etc., was brought from England, the native iron 
works not being able to supply a twentieth part of the 
demand ; it is a noteworthy fact, however, that there 
were home-made edged tools and articles of husbandry 
at this time. Iron-works had also been estab- 
lished on a small scale in Maryland, Virginia, and 
Pennsylvania ; iron had even been exported to 
England in 17 17, but in 1750 an act was passed pre- 
venting the erection of rolling and slitting mills in the 
American Colonies, and this restricted the progress of 
iron manufactures for many years. 

The first cotton machinery made in this country, 
was in 1786, the Arkwright machinery was set in 
operation in this country in 1790, and in 1793 there 
was a mill in Rhode Island with 72 spindles ; cotton 
manufactures increased rapidly, but in 181 5 and 1816, 
notwithstanding the home manufactures, foreign 
cottons to the value of one hundred and eighty 
million dollars were imported, and this checked the 
progress of American manufactures, but they were sub- 
sequently encouraged by the Tariff Acts of 1824, 
1828, and 1832. 

It will be unnecessary to dwell at length on the 
condition of our manufactures in 1800, we all know 
that they did not keep pace with agriculture and 
commerce. 

In spite of this, however, we had great inventors 
in these early days ; among intelligent people, where 
freedom of thought and action prevail, and where 
there is any protection for inventors, ingenuity and 
enterprise cannot be suppressed. ' 



42 Patents and the Useful Arts. 

In 1777, Oliver Evans, then twenty-two years of 
age, a country blacksmith, invented a machine for 
making card-teeth ; a few years later he effected a 
revolution in the manufacture of flour by inventing 
and applying the elevator, conveyer, drill, and hopper- 
boy, but experienced the usual difficulty in bringing 
them into use. 

There was no patent law at this time, but the 
very same feeling of self-assertion and self-protec- 
tion which actuated Prince Rupert and the Marquis of 
Worcester in 1663, prompted Evans to acquire an 
exclusive right to his inventions ; he applied to the 
Legislatures of Pennsylvania and Maryland and this 
right was granted. He also applied to the Legislature 
of the former State, for the exclusive right to build 
and run steam-carriages ; not a member of the Legis- 
lature believed 'that Evans could succeed in his 
efforts in this direction, but, much to the credit of the 
members, they granted the right, " for the purpose of 
encouraging his inventive powers." 

Evans was undoubtedly the inventor of the high- 
pressure steam-engine, which has become the univer- 
sal motor in this country for land purposes, and without 
which there would have been no locomotive. 

We cannot peruse the history of Oliver Evans, 
without coming to the conclusion that had he received 
proper encouragement, locomotives would first have 
run on this continent ; as it was, he was the first 
to make a steam-carriage for common roads, which 
propelled itself for a mile and a half. 

A few men encouraged Evans, but his efforts 



Patents and Manufactures in United States. 43, 

were obstructed by the published opinions of so-called 
men of science. 

These scientific obstructionists have existed from 
the first, we have too many of them around us to-day ; 
they were a great nuisance in the Royal Society, and so 
they are to our present societies. 

Evans, on December 18, 1790, obtained a patent 
for the manufacture of flour and meal, under the act 
of the same year. 

He met with precisely the same persecutions 
Avhich embittered the lives of the early English 
inventors; the men who had first laughed at his *'ji7n- 
cracks' stole them without compunction, but Evans 
was not a man to be duped, he brought suit, the first 
ever instituted under the act of 1790, against infringers, 
but the Judges of the United States Circuit Court for 
the Pennsylvania District decided unanimously that the 
patent was deficient in form, insufficient, invalid, and 
void of itself; he filed a new application for a patent, 
but the Secretary of the State decided that he was not 
authorized to grant the patent ; Evans petitioned Con- 
gress for relief, and a special act was passed January 
21, 1808, authorizing the grant of a new patent, which 
was accordingly issued January 28, 1808, after which 
another series of prosecutions followed, the patent was 
sustained, the exasperated millers petitioned Congress, 
Evans filed a counter-petition, and so the fight went 
on. The controversy was of the most violent char- 
acter. In all the disputes between inventors and 
manufacturers in England, none exceeded that 
between Evans and the American millers in pertinacity. 



44 Patents and the Useful Arts. 

It was the fashion, in those days, with people who 
wanted to be very emphatic, to ''drop into poetry ^ 
as Silas Wegg (one of the inventions of Dickens) 
says. Any idea of an aUiance between poetry and 
inventions and machinery, or poetry and patents, 
would be laughed at in these days ; but Dyer in his 
poem of the "Fleece," 1758, described the spinning- 
machine in admirable blank verse. 

There is a very scarce little book entitled " Patent 
JRight Oppression Exposed, by Patrick N. I. Elisha, 
Esq., Poet Laureate." It is, in reality, a satirical attack 
on the millers, the great enemies of Oliver Evans, and 
was evidently written by Evans himself. There is no 
date on the title-page, but the book, it is thought, was 
published in Philadelphia in 181 2. It is dedicated to 
"the Right, the Honest Millers, throughout the United 
States, by the author, who is fully sensible of the 
impositions and frauds practised on your privileges by 
a crazy-pated prig, etc., etc." 

We are told in the introduction to this poetical 
veffusion that 

" When man is with monopolies vexed 
And by oppressors roundly taxed," 

" 'Tis worse than smoke, a scolding wife, 
Or all the other ills of life." 

Alluding to the patent act of 1790, the rhymster 
says : 

'* Some years ago the moon at full, 
The time it most affects the skull, 
For Madam Luna at that season. 
Has power to disconcert man's reason, 



Patents and Manufactures in United States. 45 

The Congress of these famous States, 
Was amply tilled with crazy pates, 
Whom every knave could gull and quiz, 
To do for him just what he please. 
Some rogues perceiving their condition, 
Forthwith presented a petition, 
Right artful couched in sweetest tone, 
In substance like what follows on : 

"That when a man should rack his brains, 
And be at some expense and pains, 
To find new arts, or trades, or show, 
How old ones they can better do. • 
No T)ther person should or might 
Have privilege, liberty, or right, 
To use what he or they'd invent, 
Unless he first would beg consent. 
On pain of such a charge and fine. 
As courts and jury might assign, 
To work they went with hem and haw, 
And soon patched up the patent law." 
******** 

" Thus vile monopoly began, 
To infringe upon the rights of man." 

The following ending of this extraordinary effu- 
sion, although it was written sixty-six years ago, will be 
recognized as applicable to the recent proceedings 
before the Senate and House Committee on Patents, 
when certain agents, in the interest of Western rail- 
roads and Western farmers, denounced our patent 
system : 

" Now let us crush this growing evil, 
Planted and watered by the devil. 
Unite our talents oratorical, 
To Congress send a snug memorial. 



46 Patents and the Useful Arts. 

Gather as thick as locusts 'round, 

To tease and pest and then confound, 

And certainly we'll be victorious, 

And save our money. Oh, how glorious!" 

Evans was an inventor of extraordinary versa- 
tility, he made the first steam dredging machine, and 
he proposed the propelhng of carriages by steam, and 
would have carried his suggestions into effect but 
for the denunciations of charlatans, who lived long 
enough to be ashamed of this arrogant condemnation 
of the propositions of one of the most ingenious men 
the world ever produced. 

Every intelligent school-boy knows, or should 
know, the history of Robert Fulton, the inventor of 
steam navigation. Fulton's claim has formed the 
subject of no little discussion. The French claim 
the invention for a Frenchman, the English for an 
Englishman ; it has been claimed for others, in our 
own country, for John Fitch, Ramsey, and Oliver 
Evans, although the latter, judging from the following 
extract from his satire, accorded the credit to Fulton : 

" But patentees have seldom got, 

What they can nothing do without, 
. To wit the precious cash, and then 

The terms, so shorty all wealthy men 

To undertake new things afraid are. 

So we escaped this ill because 

Of that good trait in patent laws, 

Until two rascals, of New York, 

Together got to brew ill work. 

Torpedo Fulton and his crony, 

Called Livingston, who furnished money. 

And, set on by an evil spirit, 

Resolved great riches to inherit, 



Patents and Manufactures in United States. 47 

So had a boat made that should ply 
Between New York and Albany, 
To row by steam as told above, 
Which, hang 'em, did successful prove." 

In these utilitarian days we measure an inventor's 
capacity not by his suggestions, but by his success, 
and, measured from this stand-point, Fulton must be 
declared to be the father of steam navigation. 

It has been urged that very little invention was 
required to produce a steamboat, inasmuch as paddle- 
boats driven by horses were well known ; that steam- 
engines were common, and that all that Fulton did 
was to remove the horses and put a steam-engine in 
their place. 

This is not the argument of a man who looks be- 
low the surface of things ; it required skill, ingenuity, 
and, above all, daring, to combine a steam-engine 
with a vessel. 

Fulton, like Watt and Arkwright before him, had 
the good fortune to obtain the advice and pecuniary 
assistance of a very energetic coadjutor, Robert Liv- 
ingston. Fulton himself was an accomplished man, 
he w^as an artist of no mean attainments, he was the 
inventor of spinnmg and rope machinery, a submarine 
boat and of the torpedo, which is to play an important 
part in future warfare. 

Fitch was another of our early inventors, but an 
unfortunate one. 

Whitney, a graduate of Yale College, by invent- 
ing the cotton-gin, patented in 1792, did more for the 
interests of the cotton-growers of the South and for 



48 Patents and the Useful Arts. 

manufacturers of textile materials throughout the 
world than any other man of his time. 

But this was not his only achievement, he was 
the first to carry into effect at his fire-arm factory in 
New Haven that system of division of labor which 
was gradually applied to manufactures throughout the 
world. 

It is a pleasure to record the fact that Whitney 
acquired a competence. 

Fulton 'declared that Arkwright, Watt, and Whit- 
ney were the three men who did more for mankind 
than any of their contemporaries. He might have 
added a fourth — Fulton himself. 

It would occupy too much space to give even a 
short notice of all our prominent early inventors. 

From July 31, 1790, when the first patent was 
granted under the act of that year, to and including 
the year 1800, three hundred and fifteen patents were 
issued. 

In the list of American patentees during that 
time, occur the names of all the inventors men- 
tioned above, excepting Fulton, whose patent was not 
granted until 1809. There are Jacob Perkins, in- 
ventor of metal-plating, nail machines, steel engrav- 
ing, the steam-guns, sectional boiler, and other devices, 
Charles Wilson Peale, James Ramsey, John Stevens, 
and many well-known inventors ; on the list can also 
be found the name of Sir Isambert K. Brunell, the 
English inventor of block machinery and the builder 
of the Thames Tunnel. 



Patents and Manufactures in United States. 49 

All our early inventors, from 1790 to 1800, were 
patentees, and their history exhibits them in the light 
of thoroughly earnest men of extraordinary talent, and 
most persistent in the assertion of the rights acquired 
by their patents. 



50 Patents and the Useful Arts. 



VII. 

USEFUL ARTS IN FRANCE PRIOR TO 180O. 

I MUST now take the reader to France. 

From 17 10 to 1774, when in England the useful 
arts were making wonderfully rapid progress and her 
manufactures and wealth increasing, France was in a 
degraded condition, her finances exhausted, her 
people trampled to the dust, the king and nobility 
revelling in debauchery and extravagance. 

It seems almost impossible to-day to believe that 
any country, boasting of its civilization, could have 
been reduced to such a state of debasement as France 
one hundred and four years ago, when Louis XV. 
died. 

His personal vices and his misgovernment had 
prepared the way for the overthrow of the monarchy, 
which carried with it to destruction his innocent suc- 
cessor. 

The day of retribution was at hand. The Bastile 
had been taken, the palace of Versailles had been 
sacked, the king was virtually a prisoner at the Tuil- 
leries ; he had sworn to support the new Constitution, 
when, on December, 1790, the Constituent Assembly 
decreed that " every new idea, the manifestation or 
development of which can become useful to society, 
belongs first to him who conceived it." 



Useful Arts in France Piio?' to 1800. 51 

The law relating to useful discoveries, and to the 
means of assuring the exclusive right to those who 
are recognized as their authors, was passed January 7, 
1791 ; a second law, in addition to the first, was 
passed May 25, 1791. 

The first patent granted, July 27, 1791, was to 
Ollivier, for pottery-ware, and was signed by Louis 
XVI. as King of the French. 

In 1792 several patents were granted ; one for 
driving flour-mills by steam, and in, this year was pat- 
ented the first of the series of improvements directed 
to municipal cleanliness. It is to France we owe the 
sanitary system, unknown a hundred years ago. 

On the 17th of January, 1793, a few days before 
the execution of the King, a curious patent was 
granted, which exhibits the relentless eagerness of the 
people to stamp out the most insignificant traces of 
royalty, and the readiness with which inventors will 
avail themselves of every opportunity, even political 
agitation, to turn their inventive faculties to profitable 
account. 

This patent was for Republican playing-cards. 

The kings were replaced by the emblems of the 
genius of art, of war, peace, and commerce ; the 
queens by emblems of liberty of the press, of 
marriage, of the professions, and of religion ; knaves, 
by emblems of equality, of rights, of duty, and of 
color. The ace, which takes all, was to be an 
emblem of law. 

This must have been rather a bad speculation, 
for the right which the patentee had acquired would 



52 Patents and the Useful Arts. 

not compel the millions cf players in France to dis- 
card the old-fashioned cards. 

Changes in habit or custom do not keep pace 
with changes in governments and institutions, and of 
this all our inventors are well aware, for the most 
formidable of all obstacles, against which they have 
to contend, is prejudice based on habit, a subject 
which I mav have to refer to hereafter. 



During the Reign of Terror but two or three pat- 
ents were granted. There could be no material prog- 
ress of the useful arts in such a condition of society 
as existed during these terrible times, the account of 
which no one can read without a shudder. 

We cannot think of these times Avithout a feeling 
of sympathy for the king, who suffered for the sins of 
his fathers ; and, certainly, every inventor should 
share in that sympathy, for he was a good workman, 
an inventor and maker of locks ; an accomplished 
printer, whose happiest days were spent in his work- 
shop. He was amiable, irresolute during prosperity, 
long-suffering in captivity, and, at the last scene of all, 
was every inch a man. 

The year 1800 was an eventful one in the history 
of French industries, for in that year Jacquard, who, 
earlier in life, had learned the arts of weaving, book- 
binding, cutlery, and type-founding, and had, with 
thousands of his countrymen, been reduced to abject 
poverty during the Revolution, completed the first 
loom which bears his name, and for which a patent 
was granted in France, in 180 1. 



Useful Arts in France Prior to 1800. 53 

Jacquard, at first, met the same fate as the early 
Enghsh inventors of textile machinery ; he was mobbed 
by the weavers of Lyons, a city which was enriched by 
Jacquard as no other city was ever enriched by one man, 
and which tardily appreciated its benefactor by erect- 
ing a statue to the great inventor in 1840. 

In 1806 the invention was purchased by imperial 
decree and the patent became public property. 

Jacquard, who also made a netting machine, stands 
out as one of the greatest inventors of any country or 
any age ; the pre-eminence of France to-day, in the pro- 
duction of ornamental textile fabrics, is due to Jac- 
quard. His invention is in universal use in all 
manufacturing countries — fabrics made by the Jac- 
quard loom are everywhere. 



54 Patents a7td the Useful Arts. 



VIII. 



PATENT LAWS IN EUROPE. 



The reader will, of course, understand that the 
above is but a very shadowy review of the progress of 
three branches of the useful arts, and their relation to 
patents, up to the year 1800, and that I have omitted 
the names of many prominent inventors and patentees ; 
the sketch, however, will suffice to impart a compara- 
tively clear idea of the condition of three great nations 
as regards industrial pursuits, when they started, 
seventy-seven years ago, on the race of progress, each 
country having a patent law to stimulate the progress 
of the useful arts in the future. 

England had the start — she had the steam-engine 
in a nearly perfected condition ; iron and coal were at 
the doors of her manufacturers ; she had Arkwright's 
spinning machinery ; a large commercial fleet ; her 
isolated position and her trained artisans. France 
had been impoverished by taxation to satisfy the 
extravagance of her nobles, by unnecessary wars and 
internal strife, and her resources were to be still fur- 
ther drained by the wars of Napoleon. The United 
States had recently passed through the War of Inde- 
pendence ; her manufactures were in a depressed 
condition, if she can be said to have had any manu- 
factures worth mentioning, but she had the high- 



Patent Laws in Europe. 55 

pressure engine of Evans, the steamboat of Fulton, 
and the cotton-gin of Whitney, and she had the start 
of the other nations in one particular — she had a lib- 
eral patent law, which was to be improved upon in 
after years. 

In 1800 there were three great nations which had 
acknowledged the right of inventors to protection for 
limited terms. 

It may be as well here to note what course coun- 
tries other than the United States, England, and 
France, pursued, as regards the promotion of the use- 
ful arts by the granting of patents. 

One of the first countries who attempted to foUow^ 
our example was Russia with its patent law of 1812, 
a law of such arbitrary character that it can scarcely 
be termed a patent law. Prussia followed in 181 5 with 
a law more exacting and less encouraging than that of 
Russia. 

The Belgian law of 1817 was a comparatively 
liberal law based on that of France, and we all know 
that Belgium is one of the most active and enterprising 
manufacturing countries in the world. 

The Dutch adopted a patent law in the same 
year. Holland stands alone as the country which has 
abandoned patents. The abolition occurred in 1869, 
the royal proclamation stating that " the grants of 
exclusive rights for inventions and improvements or 
importations of objects of art and industry promote 
neither industry nor public interest." 

In its experience on this subject, Holland seems 
to be as exceptional a country as it is in everything else. 



56 Patents and the Useful Arts, 

" Such a land as Holland," says a recent American 
writer, " exists nowhere else. It is not merely the 
most singular of kingdoms, it is the only one of its 
kind. You may travel the world over and yet be 
unable to form any conception of the Netherlands. 
You may live there your life long, and form no ade- 
quate idea of the remainder of the globe." 

It is not at all unlikely that among a people so 
conservative and self-satisfied as the Hollanders, 
patent laws did not promote industry. The people, 
though robust, brave, and industrious, appear to have 
a horror of innovation, as is attested by their obstinate 
adherence to sleighs in place of wheeled vehicles, for 
drawing heavy loads over rough pavements. Little 
progress in the useful arts is to be expected in a coun- 
try where men and horses continue to be shod with 
wood, and where men, women and children are still 
to be found yoked to the same tow-ropes with dogs 
and donkeys on the banks of the interminable canals. 

It may be very true that the Dutch patent law did 
not promote the progress of the useful arts in Hol- 
land ; great progress would scarcely be expected among 
a people so obstinately conservative, no matter what 
incentives were offered ; but the Dutch law was so 
intensely selfish in its character that it would scarcely 
be expected to promote any public advancement in the 
arts, one of its prominent clauses being to the effect 
that a native forfeited his patent if he secured his 
invention in any other country. / 

It will not do for those who are opposed to patents 
to point to Holland as a country which flourishes 



Patent Laws in Ein^ope. 57 

without a patent law ; for it is a country where the 
limited manufacturing interests are at a standstill, if 
not retrograding, and where the prominent products 
are gin, tulips, and cheese. 

Switzerland, a country which never possessed any 
patent laws, is also pointed to by the advocates for 
the abolition of patents. In respect to Switzerland, 
Mr. Day, in his able paper read before the Philo- 
sophical Society of Glasgow, says : — 

"When do we hear of an important invention com- 
ing to maturity in that country ? There is plenty of 
inventive talent in Switzerland, but Swiss inventors 
lack the stimulus of a patent law, and, therefore, have 
to come here or go elsewhere where an invention can 
be patented, and is recognized by the State as bo7ia 
fide property," 

"The patent system is the one by which a nation 
can secure the maximum advantage from the inven- 
tion, the only one by which invention is properly 
encouraged, the only one by which the real value of 
an invention can be ascertained, and, therefore, the 
only one which can secure not merely reward, but 
a due reward, precisely its exact w^orth, to the in- 
ventor." 

Some of the greatest inventors of to-day are from 
Switzerland, but they are to be found in patent grant- 
ing countries, our own amongst the number. 

In Bavaria a patent law was adopted in 1826, and 
in Wurtemberg in 1836 ; in the German States of the 
Zollverein in 1840; Sweden, 1834; Norway, 1839; Can- 
ada, 1849; Saxony, 1850; Austria, 1852. To-day every 



58 Patents and the Useful Arts, 

considerable country in Europe has its patent law, with 
the exception of Holland and Switzerland ; and perhaps 
the best argument in favor of a patent system is the 
fact that Holland has suddenly aroused herself from 
her lethargy and is contemplating an enactment of 
a new and liberal patent law, while in Switzerland 
there has been much discussion about the depression 
of her manufactures, and especially of the watch 
trade, and a patent system closely allied to our own 
has been pointed to by some of her prominent citizens 
as the only remedy for the difficulty. 

All the English colonies have patent laws, several 
South American States have adopted them, even little 
Liberia has its patent law, and so has that progressive 
country, Japan. 

The effect of a patent law on the progress of the 
useful arts and prosperity in any nation will depend 
upon its justice and liberality, and on the wisdom 
exercised in administering it. 

The English knew this in 1852, when the fees 
were reduced and the law was so modified that a 
patent should include England, Ireland, and Scot- 
land, for which separate patents had formerly been 
granted. 

Recently, in the German Empire, the old arbitrary 
law of Prussia was abolished, and a new law, of a lib- 
eral character, based partly on our own system, was 
adopted. 

Before this law was finally adopted, however, a 
strong opposition to patents, with the great Chancel- 
lor Bismarck at its head, manifested itself; but discus- 



Pate7it Laws m Europe. $9 

sion and inquiry led to a change of opinion which 
resulted in a more liberal law than that originally con- 
templated. 

Again, in England, arbitrary enactments were 
recently suggested by the law officers of the Crown, 
but the suggestion was frowned down by public senti- 
ment, and there is every indication in England of the 
adoption of wise measures based on our own system, 
which has been substantially adopted in Canada. 



A very scanty history of the industries of the 
world since the year 1800 would occupy volumes; 
indeed, there are thousands of volumes relating to 
different branches, and there is not one of these which 
does not base the information it imparts on the records 
of patents. The history of the progress of the useful 
arts, during the last seventy-seven years, is the history 
of patents during that time. 

I shall not attempt to give even a vague outline 
of the progress of the industrial arts in England and 
France after the year 1800, but a fair idea of that prog- 
ress in England may be acquired by noticing the fact, 
that about fifteen hundred patents were granted in that 
country from 1800 to 1861 for inventions (many of 
them American) for preparing and spinning cotton. 
We all know the astounding progress which had been 
made in England, in this manufacture, during that 
time. 

No matter what branch of industry we investigate, 
we shall always find its progress indicated by the num- 



6o Pate7its aiid the Useful Arts. 

ber of patents granted at different times ; this may be 
accepted as an infallible guide in prosecuting our 
researches, and as positive proof of an intimate alli- 
ance between patents and the progress of the useful 
arts which cannot be severed without disastrous results 
in the future. 



Patents, Etc., in United States after iSoo. 6r 



IX. 



PATENTS AND MANUFACTURES IN THE UNITED 
STATES AFTER 1800. 

Let us turn to our own country, and look at the 
condition of our patent system in the year 1836. 

This is set forth in the report of Senator Ruggles 
to the United States Senate in that year, from which 
report I extract the following: "When the existing 
organization, under the act of 1790, was adopted, the 
granting of patents was a matter of little importance, 
compared with what it now is. The arts in this coun- 
try were but little understood, and but little cultivated. 
Agriculture and commerce constituted our principal 
business. We had few manufactures, except those of a 
domestic character, adapted to ordinary domestic 
wants. Our workshops were in Europe; enterprise^ 
in this country, ran in other channels. The war of 
1812 gave it a new^ direction, and a new impulse, by 
creating an occasion for w^orkshops of our own. 
Necessity became the mother of invention, and Ameri- 
can manufactures sprang into existence as by enchant- 
ment. Their rise and progress may be dated from 
that period ; and a more rapid advancement in the 
arts, and a more astonishing development of human 
ingenuity, have never taken place in any other age or 
country. This remark wnll appear far from extrava- 



'62 Patents aiid the Useful Arts, 

gant to any one who will take the trouble to examine 
the subject. This awakening of dormant genius to a 
practical and active existence, next to the arousing of 
the political and patriotic energies of the Union, was 
one of the great results of that contest. It opened to 
the country a new era. The nation entered upon a 
new existence, — she has become all at once a manu- 
facturing, as well as an agricultural and commercial 
nation." 

" Important and interesting as the Patent Office is 
now considered, it is believed, that, under such new 
organization as is contemplated by the bill presented 
herewith, it will contribute largely to the great interests 
of the country, and bear no small part in elevating 
our national character. American ingenuity has 
obtained much consideration on the other side of the 
Atlantic. Even the manufacturers of England are not 
a little indebted to it for some of their most valuable 
improvements. Her woolen manufactures, especially, 
have, within the past few years, undergone an 
entire change by the adoption of American inven- 
tions, by which wool has been made as yielding and 
submissive to the power of machinery as any material 
whatever. Cotton machinery has also been greatly 
improved in the hands of our mechanics, and while 
England receives from us three-fourths of the cotton 
she uses, in raw material, we furnish her also with 
some of the most valuable improvements in the means 
of manufacturing it. Indeed, what mechanism or 
manufacture has, for the last twenty years, been 
brought across the Atlantic, that has not, on being 



Patents, Etc., iji United States afte?"- 1800. 63 

returned, borne the distinguishing marks of the 
superior ingenuity of American mechanics ? For- 
merly we borrowed and copied much that was valuable 
from Europe — now Europe is borrowing and copying, 
with no little advantage, from us, and she must not be 
too much surprised if she shall soon find a formidable 
balance against her." 

What has been the progress of our industries — a 
progress due to the stimulating effect of patents — 
since the above was written, forty-two years ago ? 

Volumes of carefully compiled facts, and elabo- 
rate statistical details, would be required for a com- 
plete answer to that question ; a simple list of the 
patented inventions which have added to the wealth 
of the country, would fill a volume as large as that in 
the reader's hand. 

Schuselles's picture of a group of twenty great Amer- 
ican inventors, who were living when the picture was 
painted in 1861, tells us very little of the story of 
American ingenuity : it gives us the portraits of Howe,. 
Blanchard, Bigelow, Goodyear, McCormick, Morse, 
Colt, Sickels, and about a dozen more of equal promi- 
nence — all great men whose names will never be for- 
gotten ; but where are the thousands of inventors, who 
by the intelligent exercise of their creative talents, in 
channels which do not command public attention, 
have contributed so much to the fame of our peoplC; 
as the most ingenious in the world ? 

The following simple figures relating to exports 
will enable us to appreciate our inventors better than 
all the pictures which could be painted. 



■64 Patents and the Useftd Arts. 



Unmanufactured Articles 
Breadstuffs .... 
Manufactured Articles . 



1850. 


1877. 


$72,674,570 


$171,128,508 


21,015,132 


117,806,476 


18,299,196 


149,407,180 



Intelligent and observing foreigners have a higher 
appreciation of our inventors and of our patent system 
than we ourselves have, if we may judge by a com- 
parison of the recent attacks in Congress on patents 
with the address of Mr. Bally to the Swiss manufac- 
turers, on his return from the Centennial Exhibition. 

A few extracts from Mr. Bally 's pamphlet will 
serve well to illustrate the proud position we have 
reached under a liberal patent system. 

" With zeal and with activity, the American, aided 
by his natural intelligence, makes his way very 
quickly. 

"Another factor, which aids to favor the education 
of the people, is the excellent system of patents, by 
means of which, at a very moderate expense, a pat- 
ent is obtained." 

" Many European states have also a patent sys- 
tem, but as they see in it, first of all, a source of rev- 
enue for the state, those of moderate fortune can 
hardly obtain a patent. In Europe the inventor anx- 
iously hides his secret from all eyes until he is in 
possession of his patent. The Americans do not 
know this uneasiness, because there the inventor 
alone can take a patent, which he afterwards has the 
right to sell if he pleases." 

" Every intelligent man has thus before him the 
possibility of fortune, often by a very slight improve- 



Patents, Etc., in United States after 1800. 65 

ment, and this keeps in ceaseless activity the intelli- 
gent part of the population." 

" I am satisfied from my knowledge that no people 
has made, in so short a time, so many useful inven- 
tions as the American ; and if to-day machinery 
apparently does all the work, it nevertheless, by no 
means, reduces the workman to a machine. He uses 
it as a machine, it is true, but he is always thinking 
about some improvement to introduce into it ; and 
often his thoughts lead to fine inventions or useful 
improvements." 

'* To this is joined the enterprising and independent 
spirit of the American, the superiority of his machines, 
and the division of labor. Each of these would be 
sufficient of itself to place the American producer m 
a position to become a serious competitor with the 
European. Moreover, for a few years past we have 
felt this competition very sensibly." 

' ' Swiss watch-making is so deeply affected by 
American competition that many makers have reduced 
their production, and many others have been obliged to 
stop entirely, because the Americans not merely make 
their owm watches, but export also to Europe, particu- 
larly to France and to England." 

"Who does not already know American sewing- 
machines ? And who has not already become satis- 
fied, even when machines of the same kind are made 
in Europe in enormous quantities, that the somewhat 
higher price of the American machines is largely 
compensated for by their construction, their solidity, 
and their convenience ? 



66 Patents and the Useful Arts. 

" Have you ever compared a rake, a spade, a knife, 
a hatchet, made in America, with tools made here ? 
How much Europe is left behind ! I do not speak of 
special articles, of which many are not even known 
to us." 

"America furnishes already to Europe pig-iron, 
steel, nails, and the celebrated products in steel of 
Krupp have found in America rivals worthy to hold 
their own against them." 

"At the Exposition of objects of art at Munich there 
was nothing in cast-iron which could be compared to 
the stove which I had brought home from America, 
not merely for the good quality of the casting, but also 
in the ornamentation. 

"American products are handsome, solid, practi- 
cal, light, and of good material." 

"We must introduce the patent system. All our 
production is, more or less, a simple copy. The inventor 
has no profit to expect from his invention, no matter 
how useful it may be. On the contrary, each one has 
the right, with us, to appropriate to himself an inven- 
tion, to copy it, to the great injury of the inventor. It 
is evident that this absolute want of protection will 
never awakeii. in a people the spirit of invention, but, 
on the contrary, accustoms them to copy more and 
more that which belongs to their neighbors, and that 
is not to the honor of our country. The want of pro- 
tection for new inventions is a great disadvantage for 
us. Tiie state ought not to hesitate to add to its re- 
sources this new resource ; but at the same time, we 
must remember that an invention is valuable in pro- 



Patents, Etc., m United States after 1800. 67 

portion to the facility with which it can be made 
available, and so it is essential that the grant of patents 
be accessible to inventors of the most moderate for- 
tunes. America has shown us how, in a few years, a 
people in the midst of circumstances often embarrass- 
ing, can merit by its activity, its spirit of enterprise, and 
its perseverance, the respect and the admiration of the 
whole world, and acquire in many respects an incon- 
testible superiority. May our sister Republic serve as 
our model in this !" 



Whatever I have said concerning the alliance of 
patents with the progress of manufacturing arts, and 
the advancement of civilization in England and other 
countries, will apply with ten times the force to our 
own nation. 

We issue more patents than any other country. 
We grant them at cheaper rates. We treat inventors 
more liberally, and the consequence of this has been 
that we have produced more inventors, more startling 
inventions, more labor-saving machinery, than any 
other people. The supremacy of American ingenuity 
is acknowledged throughout the world. 

Prior to the year 1800, about 260 patents were 
granted in this country. At the close of 1877, 198,733 
patents had been issued, and this does not include 
reissues, so let us say 200,000. Of this number 
31,000 had expired, leaving 167,000 in force in 1877. 
Already, at the present writing (February 12), 430 of 
these have expired. Every week they are expiring, 
and in 1894 probably not one of these 200,000 patents 



68 Patents and the Useful Arts. 

will be in existence ; the public will be in full and 
complete possession of all the inventions represented 
by these patents. 

To what extent has the public been taxed for 
the 31,000 to which it acquired a right at thfe close of 
1877 ? To what extent is the public being taxed for 
the 198,733 patents now in force ? 

The answer to these questions will depend upon 
the meaning applied to the word "tax;" if it is under- 
stood to mean an odious exaction, an oppressive bur- 
den, and this is the meaning attached to it by some of 
our legislators who attack patent property, the answer 
must be — not one cent. 

Patents have the effect of producing, at a cheap 
rate, things with which we are familiar and which 
have become necessities, and we buy these things 
because they are cheaper. Patents have also the 
effect of producing new things with which we are 
not familiar. People purchase these new things 
because they are better things, economize manufac- 
tures, save labor or add to their comfort, luxuries, or 
happiness ; and it would be absurd to say that the cost 
of the things they elect to buy for their own advantage 
is an odious tax or imposition on the public. 

The money which the inventor has earned by 
providing the public with new things, better things, and 
cheaper things, — and Heaven knows the money has 
been little enough, — has been well earned ; and if his 
earnings are a tax on the public, it is the same sort of 
tax which the public pays for the labor of any hard- 
working man. 



Patents, Etc., in United States after 1800. 69 

If all the extravagant and absurd stories which 
have been told as to the immense additions made 
to the manufacturing cost of patented articles, under 
the guise of royalties, were true, the consequent taxa- 
tion, if we choose to call it so, would have been but 
a mite in comparison with the direct and indirect pecu- 
niary benefit to the public — the tribute of a few drops 
in exchange for a perfect shower of advantages. 

Forty-nine fiftieths of our great national industries 
are based on patents ; patents invite capital, with cap- 
ital, division of labor and labor-saving machinery can 
be adopted, and, without these, economical production 
is impossible. 

When a machine can be made by every one there 
is no inducement for an outlay of capital ; take away 
patents and we take away the capital ; and the result 
will be inferior articles — no economy of production, no 
improvements. 

We not only want improvements in this country, 
but we want to invent the improvements, and we want 
the right to make them ; we want employment for our 
artisans. Abolish patents and you remove the incen- 
tive to invent ; the useful arts languish for the want of 
capital, and we fall from our pre-eminence as a manu- 
facturing nation. 



Making all due allowances for the useless inven- 
tions which have been patented, a subject to which I 
shall have to refer hereafter, and for the improvements 
which we have derived from foreign countries, what 
does our country owe to the useful inventions which 



70 Patents and the Useful Arts. 

are to be found among the 200,000 patents granted up 
to the close of last year ? 

No man or body of men can answer a question 
of this magnitude ; a shadowy estimate only can be 
made by comparing our resources, comforts, and con- 
veniences of to-day with those of the past ; and if some 
of our older citizens would take the pains to do this 
thoroughly, none would be more surprised than them- 
selves. 

We cannot cast our eyes on any article, the ad- 
vanced condition of which is not due to the inventor's 
art. "We cannot make a movement without touching a 
patented article. Asleep or awake we are surrounded 
by patents. They attach themselves to all our duties, 
studies, and recreations, they accompany us in our 
travels on foot, in vehicles, by railroad, or by steam- 
boat ; they cling to us in the shape of clothing and 
jewelry ; they enter into remedies for our diseases ; and 
we have the cold comfort of knowing that they accom- 
pany us to the grave in the shape of patented coffins. 
We cannot get clear of them." 

We owe our present civilization to our free institu- 
tions, the enterprise of our people, education and patents. 
The legislator may smile when he reads this last 
item ; but the lower he looks below the surface of things, 
the more carefully he considers the past history of 
patents, the more intimate will become in his mind the 
alliance between patents and civihzation. 



Partners in any undertaking get along amicably 
together while things go well ; but when a reverse 



Patents, Etc., in United States after 1800. 71 

takes place, a disposition of one partner to blame the 
other and make unreasonable complaints exhibits itself. 

It is the same with nations. 

There are three great sections in partnership in this 
country — the West, the South, and the East. Hard 
times are upon .us, all the sections suffer, more or less 
fault-finding is rampant, and is directed mainly against 
the East, which, by an extraordinary hallucination, is 
supposed to be the most prosperous at a time when 
failures are reported every day, when a large number 
of our workshops are closed, and thousands of our 
artisans are reduced to beggary. As our large manu- 
facturers are mainly in the East, and as their establish- 
ments are based on patents, the latter have been a 
special subject of attack. 

The Hindoos, when scourged with the cholera, 
attribute the latter to the coiTiet; trade and manufac- 
turing interests are dull,' and some of our people blame 
patents for it. 

We have land enough in the West to feed the 
world, we have the precious metals in the far West, 
we have the cotton and sugar in the South, we have 
the manufacturing enterprise of the East, we have the 
coal and iron, we have commercial outlets on the sea- 
board, our canals, navigable rivers, railways, and the 
telegraph, have brought all sections closely together, 
we have everything to make us the greatest agricultural, 
commercial, and manufacturing nation of the world, 
and that must be our destiny if partnership quar- 
rels and class legislature do not militate against it. 

The opening of the West has been quite as 



72 Patents and the Useful Arts, 

much due to the inventor's talent as to the enterprise 
of our people. "Agriculture might as well dispense 
with the fertility of the soil as with the aid of the 
genius of invention in its cultivation." Future inge- 
nuity may be devoted to enhancing the prosperity of 
the South, which is teeming with unutilized products 
waiting for the inventors' skill, and where there is an 
intelligent people to appreciate his efforts. 

Invention, aided by science, "has lengthened 
life ; it has mitigated pain, it has extinguished dis- 
eases, it has increased the fertility of the soil, it has 
given new securities to the mariner, it has furnished 
new arms to the warrior, it has spanned great rivers 
and estuaries with bridges of form unknown to our 
fathers, it has guided the thunderbolt innocuously from 
heaven to earth, it has lighted up the night with the 
splendor of the day, it has extended the range of the 
human vision, it has multiplied the power of the 
human muscles, it has accelerated motion, it has 
annihilated distance, it has facilitated intercourse, 
correspondence, all friendly offices, all dispatch of 
business ; it has enabled man to descend to the depths 
of the sea, to soar into the air, to penetrate securely 
into the noxious recesses of the earth, to traverse the 
land in cars which whirl along without horses, to 
cross the ocean in ships which run ten knots an hour 
against the wind. These are but a part of its fruits, 
and of its first fruits, for it is a philosophy which never 
rests, which is never perfect. Its law is progress. A 
point which yesterday was invisible is its goal to-day 
and will be its starting point to-morrow." — Macau lay. 



About Inventors and Their Trials. 73 



X. 



ABOUT INVENTORS AND THEIR TRIALS. 

The reader must not suppose that in the writer's 
opinion all inventors are saints, all patentees are invent- 
ors, or that the patent laws and the administration of 
these laws are all that they should be. 

Inventors belong to the great family of originators, 
and must be classed with authors, artists, and all 
whose work is the result'of intellectual labor, exercised 
'* in devising something new or not known before, or in 
modifying and combining things before made or 
known, so as to form a new whole." 

The inventors of new machinery or new processes, 
who think that they are set apart from the rest of man- 
kind, as a special race, and such opinions are not 
uncommon, make a great mistake ; the creative facul- 
ties are displayed in the ingenious arguments of the 
lawyer, the rhetoric of the orator, the diplomacy of 
the statesman, the operations of the surgeon, the tac- 
tics of the general ; all are inventors in one sense of 
the word, although by common consent and usage the 
word '.* invention " to-day apphes more especially to the 
creation of new devices, processes, or products, due to 
the direction of the human intellect in special chan- 
nels to utilitarian purposes. 



74 Pate7its arid the Useful Arts. 

Another great mistake is sometimes made by 
inventors in supposing that a verbal hint, a hasty sug- 
gestion, or an incomplete sketch of a passing idea, is 
invention, — it is merely the shadow, and the public 
demand the substance ; there must be reduction to 
practice, useful results, or there can be no invention. 

The rough, sketchy outline made by the artist 
may foreshadow the picture, but it is not what the pub- 
lic demands ; he is no artist until the picture is ready 
for enjoyment by the public ; the headings of the 
chapters of a novel may satisfy the author as to what 
the contents of the book are to be, but the public 
must have the book itself before the title of author 
can be conferred on the originator. 

Practical results of well-directed exercise of the 
intellect, results which can be enjoyed by the public, 
are what the law looks upon as invention. 

On the other hand, the inventor may carry his 
conceptions into effect by the aid of skilled labor with- 
out losing his title to the invention, carried into effect 
by that skill. No reasonable man attempts to detract 
from the merits of Rubens as an artist, because his 
pupils filled in part of his pictures with skillful hands. 
No one doubts the originality of the novels of Dumas, 
because he employed men of literary skill to put 
words in the mouths of the characters whom the author 
had created. 

It is the active, industrious inventor, not the vis- 
ionary schemer, whom the law favors, under our patent 
system, the man who carries his ideas into effect and 
makes them available to the public. 



About Inventors and Their Trials. 75 

There are circumstances, however, under which 
the law w^ill take cognizance of the rough sketch and 
even verbal suggestions of an inventor, and that is 
when he is exercising reasonable industry in putting 
them into practice, and when there is a rival claimant, 
then the law will recognize the suggestions as evidence, 
not so much of the invention, as of the conception 
which the originator is exercising proper efforts to 
reduce to the character of an invention. 

There is one respect in which the inventor has 
the advantage of his brother originators, the author or 
the artist : he can, in the majority of cases, reduce his 
ideas to shape much more readily than the author 
can finish his book or the painter can complete his 
picture ; the inventor can make, or have made, a 
drawing of his machine, and no matter how complex 
the latter may be, the drawing, if properly made, will 
be to the expert mechanic quite as intelligent as the 
machine itself. 



The true inventor, however, is subjected to many 
trials : first, his efforts are derided, and this has always 
been the case — the Marquis of Worcester was hooted 
at as a madman ; Oliver Evans w'as denounced as a 
crazy-pated schemer, and it is the same to-day in a less 
degree. When the inventor's efforts approach success, 
there is the usual fault-finding, belittling, and denials 
of originality by plodders, who never had an original 
idea in their heads. Many of us have witnessed the 
beautiful play of the Colleen Bawn. The fault-finding 
critics first sneered at it, but the intelligent people went 



76 Patents and the Useful Arts. 

to see it ; when success was assured, the criticising plod- 
ders got angry and declared that Boucicault stole the 
play from Griffin's novel of the " Collegians," in which 
I never could find any material traces of the play. 
The same sort of critics, no doubt, lived in Shake- 
speare's time, and found fault with him because he did 
not invent the original of the character of Julius 
Caesar. 

''The art of printing," said Judge Grier, "was 
stumbled over for four thousand years ; and if a patent 
for it were now presented to our expert, he would 
show you at once that the w^hole art consisted in mul- 
tiplying impressions from a combination of movable 
types. He would point you to the tracks of animals 
as original impressions from movable types, and show 
the invention of printing letters to be as old as Adam." 

" Few patents would stand the test of such inge- 
nuity as this. Incredible as it may appear, yet it is 
nevertheless true, that on the trial of the originality of 
the Morse telegraph, it was gravely argued that two 
thieves in the penitentiary, who had corresponded by 
means of scratches and dots, on the prison wall, had 
preceded Morse in the invention of this most astonish- 
ing and useful art." 

The man who undertakes to invent against habit 
and custom may expect to have a hard time of it. 
There are thousands of useful inventions which have 
remained dormant for years, often during the life of the 
patents and frequently during the lifetime of the 
inventor, owing to the obstacles w^hich habit presents. 
to their introduction. 



About Inventors and Their Trials. jy 

The force, or rather tyranny, of habit, may be 
best explained by reference to famihar things of every- 
day use. If the reader wears a frock or swallow- 
tailed coat, and will put his hands behind his back, he 
will find two buttons at the junction of the tails with 
the body of the coat, and, perhaps, two buttons at the 
ends of the tails. The buttons on the dress of a Chi- 
nese mandarin mean something, they indicate the 
rank of the wearer, but we have no earthly use for the 
rear buttons on our coats : our ancestors had, how- 
ever, for before the time of fast coaches, Avhen they 
traveled on horseback, the buttons then served as 
mediums for looping up the tails of the coat so that 
they should not interfere with the rider's comfort. The 
buttons stick to us yet. 

About thirty-five years ago, a London tailor had 
the audacity to make a coat without these buttons in 
the rear ; it was termed a Taglioni, the original of our 
modern sack-coat. The first men who had the cour- 
age to w^ear these novel garments were hooted at 
as though they were criminals, and by men, too, who 
wore stove-pipe hats — the most preposterous head 
coverings ever invented. 

Put your hand at the back of your neck and you 
will find a folded collar, cravat, and shirt-band, 
three thicknesses of fabric ; a folded collar and lining 
on the vest, three layers ; and then three more on 
the coat, nine layers in all, while on the other parts 
of the body we are satisfied with two or three layers, 
and while the young lady near us is content with a. 
light ribbon or necklace. Why do we commit such 



yS Patents and the Useful Arts. 

absurdities ? Because the royal fop, George IV., or his 
crony. Beau Brunimel, invented rolHng collars. 

Hunt, one of our prominent inventors, died in 
the midst of his unsuccessful efforts to introduce his 
patented paper collars, which were at first universally 
ridiculed. An enterprising man undertook their 
manufacture, pushed them by main force on the 
market, and now the manufacture of paper collars, for 
which there are at least fifty patents, is one of our 
most prominent industries, as extensive almost as that of 
wooden-ware ; but they would never have found favor 
with the public if the manufacturer had not submitted 
to the tyranny of habit by making the surface of the 
paper in imitation of linen, and indenting the paper 
to imitate stitches. 

As soon as an inventor succeeds he is met by the 
attacks of pirates ; the very men who deride his efforts 
are the very first to appropriate his invention, just as 
manufacturers did with the first inventions of spinning 
machinery, and as the millers did with the devices of 
Oliver Evans. 

Originators other than inventors are not free from 
this evil — literary piracy prevails to-day to an enor- 
mous extent; there were three thieves and one author 
who laid claim to the little poem of " Beautiful Snow," 
and it is quite common for born plodders, without an 
original idea in their heads, to. manufacture books 
with scissors and paste, and claim to be full-fledged 
authors ; but the inventor has many more difficulties 
to surmount in establishing his right to the result of his 
intellectual labor than any other originator. 



About Inventors and Their Trials. 79 

After completing his invention he must seek a 
solicitor to prepare the proper papers for an apphca- 
tion for a patent, and prosecute the latter before the 
Patent Office, and secure the patent, which is the title 
deed of his intellectual property. 

The future welfare of the inventor depends upon 
the manner in which these duties are performed, and 
yet, as I shall show- hereafter, there are no professional 
duties, which are more frequently performed clumsily 
and recklessly than these, in every part of the country. 

The inventor has obtained his patent, he feels 
secure, and he pursues the manufacture with pecuni- 
ary success ; and now come the gadflys buzzing about 
the successful inventor, the copyists and adapters, who 
cannot exactly be classed with pirates, for they are 
actuated quite as much by a spirit of imitation as by 
avarice. This spirit prevails everywhere, and exhibits 
itself in all trades and professions, and in all phases of 
society. 

A few weeks after the national banks were estab- 
lished, the sign-painters wxre at work all over this city, 
and there was an eruption of first national barber 
shops, segar stores, eating-houses, oyster stands, etc. 

A manufacturer made a popular stove and named 
it the ' * Sunnyside ; ' ' both the stove and the name became 
popular, and the sign-painters went to work again, and 
in a short time we had Sunnyside taverns. Sunny- 
side ice-cream saloons, Sunnyside corsets, Sunnyside 
shirts, etc. Then came the word Centennial, which 
threw all others into the shade. There was a general 
scramble for the word : it was applied to every imagi- 



So Patents and the Useful Arts. 

nable thing ; suit was brought against the Exhibition 
managers for the use of the word on medals, there 
was another suit about Centennial shirts, — but all this 
is over ; we have had enough of the Centennial, and 
the word has been abandoned everywhere. It has 
b)een dull times with the sign-painters recently ; but I 
observed symptoms of another eruption, the other day, 
in the shape of a big silver dollar painted over a store. 
Adapters and improvers, however, are not to be 
despised ; their additions to or simplifications of the 
originator's invention are frequently of great impor- 
tance, and tend to increase the value of the original 
invention ; indeed, it is by a succession of improve- 
ments that perfection in machinery, apparatus, and 
process is approached. 



The pirates and adapters go to work, change 
some parts of the successful inventor's machine, add 
others, look for the weak points in the patent, and try 
to get a patent of their own, with more or less success, 
and suddenly the original patentee awakes to the fact 
that the patent is not the instrument he supposed it to 
be. He has not been told where the weak points of his 
patent are, or how much the patent covers. This is one 
of the worst evils resulting from the present practice of 
soliciting patents, of which I propose to take special 
notice further on. 

But if the patent is a good one, and fairly covers 
the ground, there is another danger. His rival may 
go to the Patent Office, hunt up the records, and dis- 
cover and buy up some old, obsolete patent for an 



About Inventors and Their Trials. 8i 

invention, some features of which have a resemblance 
to parts of our inventor's patent. The old patent is 
re-vamped by re-issue, and the inventor finds that his 
own patent property is subordinate to this old, 
patched-up affair. Suits follow, and not unfrequently 
the inventor is ruined. 

In spite of all these difficulties there are thou- 
sands of well-to-do and prosperous inventors, but 
these are the men who have learned by experience, 
sometimes by a very bitter experience, how to sur- 
mount the difficulties. On every hand are to be found 
inventors who have made fortunes, and there are many 
more who have made moderate sums ; but in all such 
cases it will be found that hard work and perseverance 
have had as much to do with these successful results 
as ingenuity. It is the new inventors who are vic- 
timized and often succumb to the formidable difficul- 
ties which present themselves, and become ruined and 
disheartened. To such an extent has this prevailed, 
that patents are looked upon with more or less sus- 
picion throughout the length and breadth of the land. 

Our law-makers, instead of favoring bills, which, 
if passed, must succeed in crippling the efforts of 
inventors, and proposing amendments which, if they 
become law, must arrest progress of the industrial 
arts, should direct their attention to the evils as they 
exist and where they exist, and not ruin a system 
which, in spite of all its defects, has made us the 
most ingenious nation in the world. It is possible 
that I may be able to point out in the next chapter 
some of the weak points which our legislators can 
attack with the best results. 



82 Patents and the Useful Arts. 



XL 



THE UNITED STATES PATENT OFFICE— ITS EARLY 
HISTORY. 

We have seen that the first act of Congress on the 
subject of patents was passed in 1790. It authorized 
the Secretary of State, the Secretary of War, and 
Attorney-General, or any two of them, on appHcation, 
to grant patents for such new inventions and dis- 
coveries as they should deem ''sufficiently useful and 
important." 

Under this act the Board exercised the power of 
refusing patents for want of novelty, or of sufficient 
utility or importance. 

In 1793 the act of 1790 was repealed and another 
act passed, authorizing patents to citizens of the United 
States only, to be granted by the Secretary of State, 
subject to the revision of the Attorney-General. 

In 1800 the privilege of taking out patents was 
extended to aliens who had resided two years in this 
country, and made oath of their intentions to become 
citizens. 

The act of 1793 gave, according to the practical 
construction it received, no power to the Secretary 
to refuse a patent for want of either novelty or useful- 
ness. The only inquiry was whether the terms and 



Early History of the Patent Office. 83 

forms had been complied with ; the grant of patents 
was therefore simply a ministerial duty. 

I have before me the report of a select committee 
of the Senate appointed ''to take into consideration 
the state and condition of the Patent Office and the 
laws relating to the issuing of patents for new and 
useful inventions and discoveries." This report, which 
was presented April 28, 1836, by Mr. Ruggles, with Sen- 
ate bill No. 239, is especially valuable, as it gives us a 
clear idea of the opinion of wdse legislators as regards 
the evils resulting from the indiscriminate issue of 
patents without question as to novelty. I therefore 
introduce the following quotations : 

"Under the act referred to (the act of 1793) the 
Department of State has been going on for more than 
forty years issuing patents on every application with- 
out any examination into the novelty of the invention, 
and the evils which necessarily result from the law as 
it now exists must continue to increase and multiply 
daily till Congress shall put a stop to them. 

"Some of these evils are as follows: 

"I. A considerable portion of all the patents 
granted are worthless and void, as conflicting with 
and infringing upon one another, or upon public 
rights not subject to patent privileges, arising either 
from a want of due attention to the specification of 
claim, or from the ignorance of the patentees, of the 
arts and manufactures, and of the inventions made in 
other countries and even in our own. 

"2. The country becomes flooded with patent 
monopolies, embarrassing to bona fide patentees 



84 Patents aiid the Useful Arts. 

whose rights are thus invaded on all sides, and not 
less embarrassing to the community generally, in the 
use of even the most common machinery and long- 
known improvements in the arts and common manu- 
factures of the country. 

"3. Out of this interference and collision of pat- 
ents and privileges a great number of lawsuits arise, 
which are daily increasing in an alarming degree, 
onerous to the courts, ruinous to the parties, and inju- 
rious to society. 

"4. It opens the door to frauds, which have 
already become extensive and serious. It is repre- 
sented to the committee that it is not uncommon for 
persons to copy patented machines in the inodel 
room, and having made some slight, immaterial alter- 
ations they apply in the next room for patents. 

" There being no power given to refuse them, pat- 
ents are issued, of course. Thus prepared, they go 
forth on a retailing expedition, selling out their patent 
rights for States, counties, and townships to those 
who have no means at^hand of detecting the imposi- 
tion and who find, when it is too late, that they have 
purchased what the vendors had no right to sell, 
and what they obtained thereby no right to use. 
This speculation m patent rights has become a regu- 
lar business and several hundred thousand dollars, it 
is estimated, are paid annually for void patents, 
many of which are thus fraudulently obtained." 

The report from which the above is a quotation, 
resulted in the patent act of 1836, which established 
the Patent Office as a bureau, with a Commissioner at 
its head, under the direction of the Secretary of State. 



The Examining System. 85 



XII, 



THE EXAMINING SYSTEM — ITS PAST AND PRESENT 
CONDITION. 

The act of 1 836 commanded the Commissioner " to 
make, or cause to be made, an examination of every 
alleged new invention or discovery, and if, on any 
such examination, it shall not appear to the Commis- 
sioner that the same had been invented or discovered 
by any other person in this country prior to the 
alleged invention or discovery thereof by the appli- 
cant, or that it had been patented or described in any 
printed publication in this or any foreign country, or 
had been in public use or on sale, with the applicant's 
consent or allowance prior to the application, if the 
Commissioner shall deem it to be sufficiently useful 
and important it shall be his duty to issue a patent 
therefor." 

If the application should be rejected for want of 
novelty the Commissioner was commanded to "notify 
the applicant, giving him briefly such information and 
references as may be useful in judging of the propriety 
of renewing his application or of altering his specifica- 
tion, so as to embrace only that part of the invention or 
discovery which is new." There was also to be aright 
of appeal to a Board of Examiners from the adverse 
decisions. 



86 Patents and the Useful Arts. 

This was the beginning of our present exam- 
ining system. 

An inventor goes to the proper officer of the 
Government, and says I have an invention here for 
which, on the ground of its novelty and utihty, I 
demand a title deed, giving me the sole right, for a cer- 
tain time, of making, using, and selling the invention. 
Prior to the act of 1836 the authorities did not inquire 
into the correctness of the applicant's assertions, but 
gave him his title deed without a question as to nov- 
elty or utility ; after the act, however, the Government 
officer, in reply to the applicant, said we cannot accept 
your simple assertion ; you may think you have made 
an invention, but it is probable enough that you are 
mistaken ; the public and prior patentees have some- 
thing to say about the subject, and, as the servant of 
the public,' I must see whether your invention is really 
an invention, whether it is already the property of 
the public or not, or the subject of a prior patent, 
or whether you have claimed more than you are 
entitled to ; we cannot give you a title to what is 
already public property, or to what some one else 
has already acquired a title to ; we will examine the 
records, and if we find you are entitled to a patent for 
what you demand you shall have it. 

Can any one doubt the wisdom and sound public 
policy of this mediation of the Government between 
'the claimant for a patent, and the people ? 

The act of 1836 and the immediate appointment 
of Examiners in accordance with that act had the 
wonderfully wholesome effect set forth in the report 



The Examimng System. 87 

of the late Mr. Fitzgerald, one of the Examiners in 
1850, fourteen years after the passage of the act, from 
which report I extract the. folio wing: 

" No one feared to infringe a patent (granted 
under the old system without examination), as he 
was sure to be able to defeat it for insufficiency of 
description, a defective claim, or for covering what 
would be shown to be old. The maxim was that any 
patentee would be defeated who dared to commence a 
suit, and the most valuable invention seldom afforded 
any remuneration to the inventor. Patents were not 
only defective, but their reputation was bad. This old 
system, so utterly defective, and so little calculated to 
accomplish the object for which it was intended, 
which placed the fortunate or ignorant pretender on 
a footing with the meritorious inventor, was finally 
abandoned and condemned in 1836, and the present 
system, subjecting all applications to a rigid examina- 
tion, and basing all patents upon novelty and utility 
only, and refusing them for all spurious and pretended 
inventions, was adopted and carried into effect. Under 
this system, examinations immediately developed the 
fact, that nearly half the alleged inventions upon 
which patents were claimed, were mere repetitions of 
what was already known, and nearly all the papers 
filed upon which patents were to be based, were par- 
tially defective and required amendment before let- 
ters patent could be granted. Thus was marked an 
important era in our patent interests. The stan-* 
dard was by degrees elevated. It was found tha^ 
the infringement of a patent which had been pre- 



88 Patents and the Useful Arts. 

viously perpetrated without fear and with impunity, 
had become a dangerous experiment. Patent property 
began to be viewed in a different hght, and after a few 
years of experience in the practical effects of the new 
patent system, almost universal confidence was inspired 
among those who had previously abstained from pro- 
curing patents." 

** At this juncture applications for patents began to 
increase rapidly. Prior to 1844 for several years the 
number of applications had averaged about eight hun- 
dred ; but in 1844, they began steadily and rapidly to 
increase, until i n the short space of seven years they have 
almost tripled; the number filed in 1850 being about 
twenty-two hundred ; while for fifty years under the 
old system, and the incipiency of the new, they had 
only reached about eight hundred. As time passes, this 
increase becomes more rapid. It appears, therefore, 
that this system of examination, although it results in 
the rejection of half the applications for want of 
novelty, gives such security for real inventions as to 
foster and encourage the intelligent seeker after hid- 
den truth, more than any system heretofore adopted in 
this or any other country." 

The beneficial results of our examinmg system 
must always be proportionate to the wisdom exercised 
in carrying it into effect, and it must be admitted that 
there has always been much discussion as to the best 
mode of doing this. 

Our early Examiners were strict and exacting, fre- 
quently to an extent which rendered their judgments 
illiberal and even unjust. 



The Examming System. 89 

Searches amidst the records of the Patent Office 
frequently bring to hght inventions of great value, 
described in rejected applications, which have been 
abandoned in despair, owing to the arbitrary acts of 
our early Examiners who undertook to decide ex cath- 
edra not only questions of novelty but questions of 
practical utility and even of the commercial value of 
inventions. Instances are not uncommon in which 
inventions declared to be frivolous by early Exami- 
ners subsequently effected revolutions in particular 
branches of industry, and became the foundation of 
gigantic manufactures. 

Different constructions were put by different Exam- 
iners on the word ''utility,'' and the words ''sufficient 
value and importance y in the statute; one man con- 
tended, that in view of these words, it was his duty 
to form an opinion as to the practical and commer- 
cial value of an invention and to pass upon its infe- 
riority or superiority to prior inventions in the same 
branch of the useful arts. Another denied that the 
statute vested such absolute authority in the Com- 
missioner or Examiners. 

No man is endowed with that sagacity, or spirit 
of prophecy, which will enable him to appreciate at 
once, in every instance, the utility of an invention, 
or to foretell its future value and importance to the 
public. 

There is a conservative element in human nature, 
born of habit and prejudice, which militates against 
innovation, and it is this spirit which all of our great- 
est inventors have had to fight against, from early 



90 Patents and the Useful Arts, 

times down to our own, although it is true that the 
world, as it has grown older, has become more tole- 
rant of inventors and their projects ; if it had not, the 
present advanced condition of the useful arts would 
never have been reached. This force of habit, how- 
ever, this doubt about novelties and love for old things, 
still remain for our inventors to struggle against. 

Two-thirds interest in the original Howe sewing- 
machine was offered to a neighbor of the writer for the 
cost of taking out a patent ; but although this offer was 
made to a gentleman who was himself an inventor, 
and an enterprising and successful manufacturer, it 
was refused. 

To permit any man to exercise the right of decid- 
ing the question of patentability on the strength of 
his own preconceptions as to the practical or com- 
mercial value of inventions, or their superiority or 
inferiority to other inventions, is subversive of all 
ideas of free institutions. But some of our earlier 
Examiners continued to exercise this power even 
after the courts had declared the word "useful" 
to mean simply "capable of being used," in con- 
tradistinction to absolute frivolity, and had distinctly 
held that it is not necessary to patentability, that an 
invention should be superior to prior devices of the 
same class. All the Examiners did not keep pace with 
the courts as regards liberality in the estimate of 
inventions ; indeed to this day there are occasional 
instances of the assumption by an Examiner of author- 
ity which is not countenanced either by the rulings 
of the courts or the general practice of the Office, or by 
common sense. 



The Examining System, 91 

Judge Mason's appointment to the Commissioner- 
ship, in 1853, was an important event in the history of 
the examining system. 

It had been the custom to appeal directly from the 
adverse decision of an Examiner to one of the judges 
of the District Court of Columbia, the Commissioner 
rarely undertaking to reverse the action of his sub- 
ordinates ; but Judge Mason permitted applicants,, 
whose cases had been rejected, to appeal directly to 
himself. His actions in these appeal cases were 
characterized by good judgment and liberality, and 
this inspired something of the same spirit in his 
subordinates ; this appeal duty, however, became so 
onerous that three Examiners were detailed to attend 
to it, and this was the origin of the Board of Examiners- 
in-Chief established under the act of 1861. 

As the number of Examiners increased, the 
greater was the want of uniformity in their practice ; 
and this formed a special subject of complaint in 
Commissioner Mason's report for 1855. 

The number of applications for patents increased. 
In 1850, the number filed was two thousand one hun- 
dred and ninety-three; in 1855, four thousand four 
hundred and thirty-five ; in 1860, seven thousand six 
hundred and fifty-three ; in 1861 there was a sudden 
falling off, owing, no doubt, to the war; in 1865, the 
number had increased to ten thousand six hundred 
and sixty-four, and in 1870, to nineteen thousand one 
hundred and seventy-one; in 1877, twenty thousand 
three hundred and eight. After Judge Mason's retire- 
ment, in 1857, the Patent Office was well conducted 



92 Patents and the Useful Arts. 

by other Commissioners of ability ; but for three or 
fpur years prior to May, 1869, the affairs of the 
Office were in a very confused and discreditable 
state. 

The late Mr. Fisher became Commissioner in 
1869. He was not only a lawyer of great learning 
and ability, but had an extended technical knowledge, 
and the highest order of administrative abilities, the 
influence of which was soon felt in the Patent Office. 
He insisted upon his rulings being obeyed by his 
subordinates. He published his decisions, and within 
a year there was really more uniformity of practice 
among the Examiners than was ever known before ; 
at the same time, he inculcated the exercise of rea- 
sonable liberality in the examination of applications. 

Gen. Leggett, another able Commissioner, suc- 
ceeded Mr. Fisher; he established the Official Gazette, 
a weekly publication, giving the list of patents granted 
during the week, the decisions of the Office and the 
courts, and promulgating whatever new rules were 
adopted ; he also commenced the printing of patents, 
reproducing the drawings by the cheap process of 
photo-lithography 

This was a most important step, as copies of any 
patent granted within a given time can now be 
obtained at a very cheap rate ; — no greater boon than 
this could have been conferred on inventors and the 
public. 

Mr. Thacher, another experienced officer, suc- 
ceeded Gen. Leggett. 



The Examining System. 93 

The present Commissioner is Gen. Spear, who, 
as a subordinate in different positions in the Patent 
Office, had more experience of the inner working of 
that bureau than any Commissioner before him. 

Of late years a system of compilation has been 
adopted in the Patent Office, that is the collecting 
together in the rooms of each Examiner of drawings 
and other particulars of the classes of inventions to 
which that room is devoted. If these compilations 
proceed at the present rate, if the reprinting of the 
old patents is continued, the room of every Examiner 
will, in the course of a year, be provided with such a 
complete history of the useful arts, to which his 
classes relate, and these will be so arranged in sub- 
classes, that examinations can be conducted faithfully 
and in a remarkably short time. 

Indeed, at the present time, although between 
two hundred and three hundred patents are granted 
weekly, more satisfactory examinations are made 
than ever before, and generally in less time than was 
ever before known. 

There is, I think, a larger average of good Exam- 
iners than at any time in the history of the Patent 
Office, and their duties are as well, or perhaps better 
performed, than at any other time, and with greater 
uniformity, for the publication of decisions since 1869 
has contributed much to the bringing about an uni- 
formity of practice among Examiners. 

For all this, complaints against the Patent Office, 
and against the administration of that office, are heard 
everywhere, and that there is something radically 



94 Patents and the Useftil Arts. 

wrong in that bureau has become firmly fixed in the 
minds of a large portion of the public. 

The fact is, the Patent Office cannot reply to the 
repeated charges that are made ; a disappointed 
inventor inveighs against an officer of the Patent 
Office, and publicly declares that he has been unjustly 
treated, whereas his disappointment may be due to his 
own actions, or to the short-comings of his attorney: 
an attorney fails in his attempt to secure a patent, 
and excuses himself to his client by attacking the 
Examiner: an applicant may want something he 
ought not to have^ and have an attorney willing to 
press such a claim ; if they fail,, of course both are 
angry : a patentee becomes exasperated because 
some one has obtained a patent apparently closely 
allied to his own, and vents his wrath on the Patent 
Office, where an inquiry into the scope of his rival's 
patent may show that the similarity is rather apparent 
than real. 

This, bear in mind, has been going on for years, 
and all the time the authorities must remain silent, 
so it is no wonder that the public impression of the 
Patent Office is not an entirely favorable one. 

Oae of the most prominent complaints is that too 
many patents are granted, that many patents are 
issued for frivolous inventions which are really not 
inventions. 

Of course many frivolous patents go out of the 
Office, and there are many more not as frivolous as 
they appear. Mistakes are made occasionally, some- 



The Examining System. 95 

times absurd mistakes. More than one patent is 
sometimes, but very rarely, granted for the same 
thing, and many patents go out which should not 
be granted. 

It must be admitted, too, that there are many 
patents granted for adaptations, which are not inven- 
tions ; it must also be admitted that there exists a set 
of men, who may be termed professional schemers, 
and who are a curse not only to real inventors, but 
to the community and to the Patent Office, and espe- 
cially to manufacturers; they are what birds of prey 
are among the feathered tribe. 

These men hover about inventors, and, incapa- 
ble themselves of originating, pick up ideas and steal 
them ; or, what is almost as bad, engraft on them 
some crude notions of their own, and claiming an 
inventor's rights, get patents, not for the purpose of 
carrying their so-called inventions into effect, but with 
the hope of some day levying tribute on a legitimate 
inventor, or upon some manufacturer willing to pur- 
chase peace. In fact these professional schemers 
get out patents to trade with, and of course they are 
nuisances, — their acts tending to obstruct rather than 
to promote the progress of the useful arts. 

On the other hand, it is rarely that an invention 
is. perfected by the originator. We have seen how 
slowly the steam engine advanced towards perfection, 
— if it is perfected, which may well be doubted, — and 
how many different minds were brought to bear on 
it before Watt added what he considered, and what 
the world then considered, the finishing stroke. To 



96 Patents and the Useftd Arts, 

discourage improvement by illiberal action in the 
Patent Office, would be far more obstructive to the 
progress of the useful arts than all the mischief pro- 
fessional schemers and pirates can do. 

It may be said that the Office ought to distinguish 
between what is a real improvement and what is an 
imposition, but if this is to be done we must give the 
officers of the Patent Office an intolerably arbitrary 
authority ; what may appear to an Examiner a frivo- 
lous thing, — no advancement in the art to which it 
relates, — may be an improvement of vast import. An 
Examiner is not always capable of j udging of the effect 
of an improvement; his judgment maybe entirely 
astray and great injustice might follow his adverse 
action. 

It will never do to go back to the old times when 
Examiners exercised the authority I have stated 
above. 



There has been much discussion about the exam- 
ining system, and its total abolition has been seri- 
ously advocated, but the immediate effect of this 
would be to throw the work of examination, into the 
hands of solicitors. 

Whoever performs the work is really an arbiter 
between inventors themselves and between inventors 
and the public at large, and to take this work of arbi- 
tration from the hands of public officers, directly- 
responsible to the Government, which may assure 
their fitness and competency, and place it in the 



The Examining Syste7n. 97 

hands of private parties whose responsibility or com- 
petency is unascertained, would be a most unwise 
proceeding, whether as regards the interests of the 
public at large or of inventors. 

The charges made against the examining system 
really bespeak only defects which can be remedied ; 
the system itself is believed to be sound in theory 
and beneficial in practice for the following reasons : 

1 . Because such examination is necessary to give 
patents even 2^ prima facie presumption of validity. 

2. Because it is the most effectual check pos- 
sible upon the creation of false titles, or conflicting 
titles. 

3. Because it leads to greater care and pre- 
cision in the preparation of specifications and claims. 

4. Because it tends to increase the availability 
and value of patents as negotiable property. 

5. Because it relieves inventors of a duty which 
otherwise they would have to undertake for them- 
selves ; and which they could perform, if at all, only 
at much greater expense of time and money, and not 
nearly so well. 

6. Because the system necessarily brings about 
a vast and well arranged and accessible collection 
of information touching the practical arts, and to 
this purpose appropriately devotes a large proportion 
of fees paid by inventors. 



Patents and the Useful Arts. 



XIII. 

PRESENT MISCHIEFS ATTENDING PATENTS AND 
REMEDIES THEREFOR. 

What is the cause of the prevailing want of 
faith in patents and the Patent Office ? 

We must find an answer to this question before 
a remedy can be suggested, and the main answer 
must be — the ig7iorance which prevails among a very 
large 7najority of our people, as to the true character 
of patent property , and the true nature of the patent 
system. 

It will not do to turn round and say, in reply to 
this; "We cannot legislate brains into the heads 
of the ignorant," the Government has an intelligent 
people to deal with, and this ignorance concerning 
patent matters is not confined to the most illiterate, 
and those of the lowest order of intellect, it prevails 
among men whose business transactions are char- 
acterized by sagacity and discretion, and among 
educated men, too, who have not made themselves 
familiar with the subject; and one of the causes of 
this ignorance is to be found in every patent issued, 
upon the title-page, of which the following is a copy: 

TO ALL WHOM THESE PRESENTS SHALL COME. 

Whereas, John Y. Smith, of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, has 
presented to the Commissioner of Patents, a petition, praying for 



Mischiefs and Remedies. 99 

the grant of Letters Patent, for an alleged new, and useful 
Improvement in Steam Engines, a description of which inven- 
tion is contained in the specification, ot which a copy is hereunto 
annexed, and made a part hereof, and has compiled with the 
various requirements of Law, in such cases made and provided, 
and 

Whereas, upon due examination made, the said Claimant is 
adjudged to be justly entitled to a Patent under the Law. 

Now, therefore, these Letters Patent are to grant unto the 
said John Y. Smith, his heirs, or assigns, for the term of seven- 
teen years, from the day of 187 the exclusive 
right to make, use, and vend the said invention, throughout the 
United States and the Territories thereof. 

In testimony whereof, I have hereunto set my hand, and 

caused the seal of the Patent Office to be affixed, at the City of 

Washington, this day of in the year of 

r I our Lord 187 and of the Independence of the 

1 ^^^^- 1 United States of America the one hundred 



Countersigned, Secretary of the Interior, 



Commissioner of Patents. 

This title-page is a very formidable-looking docu- 
ment : there is the seal, the ribbon, the signatures of 
the Commissioner of Patents and the Secretary of 
the Interior ; there is the announcement of the grant 
of an exclusive right, nothing to signify that this 
right may be questioned ; there is nothing to notify 
the grantee, that in view of prior patents, he cannot 
use all that is shown in his drawing and described in 
his specifications. 

It is an illusory and dangerous title, illusory 
because it does not set forth the true character of 
the property to which it relates, and dangerous because 
7 



loo Patents and the Useful Arts. 

it has a formidable appearance, tending to create 
misplaced confidence. 

Many a cautious man who would never think of 
purchasing ordinary property without close scrutiny, 
and asking the opinion of others, has bought a patent 
or an interest in a patent without question, on the 
strength of a formidable title-page. 

The French law-makers appear to have provided 
against any false impression which the public 
through ignorance might acquire as to the true 
character of a patent, by printing on the title-page 
of every patent deed the words, " Not guaranteed by 
the Government," yet the title-pages of ourpatents do 
not contain a word of caution. 

It occurs to the writer that a title something like 
the following, would be more consonant with the true 
state of the law and the facts, and altogether prefer- 
able. 

TO ALL TO WHOM THESE PRESENTS SHALL COME : 

Whereas, John Y, Smith, of Philadelphia, Penns^^lvania, has 
deposited in the Pate at OtRce a specification (of which a true 
copy is hereunto annexed) describing an alleged Improvement 
in Steam-Engines, of which Improvements, as defined by the 
claim at the end of said specification, he claims to be the original 
and first Inventor, and has deposed upon oath, that to the best of 
his knowledge and belief the said Improvements were not known 
or used in this country before his invention thereof, and that the 
same have not been in public use or on sale with his consent and 
allowance for more than two years before his application for 
these Letters Patent. 

And whereas, it appears on due examination that the said 
specification and claims are sufiacient in law, and that no prior 
description of the said Improvements is found in any Letters 
Patent or printed publication in the records of this office. 



Mischiefs and Remedies. loi 

Now, therefore, these Letters Patent are to certify that upon 
the said evidence before the Patent Ofi&ce at this date, it appears 
that the said John Y. Smith, his heirs or assigns, are entitled 
under the law to the exclusive right of making, using, and vend- 
ing the said Improvements, as claimed by him, for the term of 
seventeen years from this date, within the whole United States 
and Territories thereof. 

In testimony whereof, etc., etc., 



-j SEAL. 



Secretary of Interior. 

Commissioner of Patents. 

Note. — The Government does not guarantee the novelty or 
utility of the invention herein set forth, nor the validity of these 
Letters Patent. 



This suggestion I simply give for what it is worth, 
and under the belief that if carried out it would 
tend to give the public and inventors an insight 
into the true character of patent property, by noti- 
fying every patentee that the novelty of his inven- 
tion is not guaranteed; that the title maybe ques- 
tioned at any time ; that the protection is directed to 
no other part of the thing shown and described than 
that defined by the inventor himself in his claims ; 
that the deed is simply prima facie evidence of 
his right to the thing or parts claimed ; and that the 
examination was a simple precautionary measure on 
the part of the Government to prevent, as far as the 
machinery at its disposal will allow, the vesting in 



I02 Patents and the Usefitl Arts. 

one patentee of a right which might really be the 
property of a prior patentee or of the public. 

The ease with which men can be gulled- by 
patents engenders the belief that a large portion of 
our people think all patents are about alike, whereas 
there can be no property more diversified than patent 
property. 

The dealer exhibits his patent deed, the proposed 
purchaser notes the neat-looking document, a seal, 
and formidable-looking grant on the first page, with 
the signatures of prominent officers of the Govern- 
ment, a drawing of the machine inside, and aprinted 
description ; surely this document, the solemn act of 
the Government, must be all right. He believes that 
whatever is shown in the drawing is included in the 
patent ; he does not understand the nature of the 
claims ; he is not aware of the fact that the part 
covered by the patent is a mere fraction of the 
machine which the drawing exhibits, that it is very 
doubtful whether the thing covered is, in fact, an 
improvement ; that the patent may be so subordinate 
to prior patents that it cannot be used without infring- 
ing the rights of others ; he does not know that the 
claims may be so weak that his neighbor could 
manufacture the same machine, with a slight and 
unimportant alteration, perhaps an alteration for the 
better. 

Of course every victim imbibes a bad opinion of 
patent property, and he and his immediate neighbors 
conclude that the whole system is a humbug ; the 
impression spreads, the member of Congress gets the 



Mischiefs and Remedies, 103 

same notions from his constituents, and the crusade 
against patents and inventors is inaugurated. 

It must be said, however, that this ignorance of 
the true character of patents does not prevail to any- 
thing hke the extent it formerly did ; the public is 
gradually acquiring a fair knowledge of the subject, as 
an intelligent people are sure to do on any subject 
which concerns their interests. 

The official gazette published by the Patent Office 
has had much to do with this. 

The increased number of applications to the 
Patent Office for copies of patents, documents relating 
thereto, and for briefs of title, indicate a more whole- 
some condition of affairs in this respect than ever 
existed before, but there is need of still more general 
enlightenment. 

The following circular, recently issued by the 
Commissioner of Patents to the Examiners, will have 
a most salutary effect in tending to enlighten the 
public as to the character of patents. 

Washington, D. C, January 15, 1878. 

In the present condition of the Patent System, with great 
numbers of Patents issuing every year. I am impressed with the 
conviction, that more and more care ought to be exercised by 
Examiners in requiring applications for mere improvements to 
be distinctly defined from generic inventions, and that applicants 
should discriminate between what they claim as new, and what 
they deem to be old. 

The remarks of the United States Supreme Court in the recent 
cases of Merrill vs. Yeomans, 11 O. G. 970, and Keystone Bridge 
Co. m. Phoenix Iron Co., 12 0. G. 980, plainly indicate the duty of 
the Office in this regard . 

It is doubtless a matter of common observation with the 
Examining Corps that the tendency on the part of applicants for 



I04 Patents and the Useful Arts, 

Patents is to avoid or neglect reference to prior patents upon 
which their invention is an improvement. 

I think much of the odium attached to patents, and much of 
the injustice and vexation arising from Patents with narrow 
claims, would be obviated were the applicant compelled to state 
specifically, where it can be done, on what his Patent is an 
improvement, and define accurately the state of the art prior to 
his invention, so that any one reading his patent, even if 
unskilled in patent matters, would see not only what is claimed, 
but would see set forth clearly the state of the art upon which 
his invention was based. 

At this time, when patents have been brought into disrepute, 
principally on account of those of a trivial nature which are 
used to embarrass persons not able to determine the scope of 
such a grant, it seems especially necessary that the Office should 
exercise great caution in this respect. 

ELLIS SPEAR, 

Commissioner of Patents. 

The strict observance in the Patent Office of the 
Commissioner's order as given above, must have a 
good effect ; for when the purchaser, on reading the 
specification, comes to the words, "1 do not claim," 
etc., he naturally hesitates, and the words may induce 
him to look further before purchasing. 

It unfortunately happens, however, that the Com- 
missionership of patents frequently changes hands, 
and the next Commissioner may take an entirely 
different view of the law, as it stands, from that 
entertained by the present able holder of the Office, 
and may promulgate new rulings : hence new legisla- 
tion may be desirable. 

The average patent does not state how much 
of what is shown in the drawing, and described 
in the specification, is not the invention of the 
patentee. 



Mischiefs and Remedies. 105 

It may be said that the claims define the scope 
of the invention, but how many people understand 
the meaning of the claims, and their relation to the 
other parts of the specification ? It is the common- 
est of all mistakes, for a man who peruses a pat- 
ent, to think that it gives the right, not only to 
what is claimed, but a right to use all the other parts 
shown in the drawing, and he may purchase the 
patent under this belief, only to find that he is tres- 
passing on some one else, and that the thing he has 
bought is absolutely locked up and beyond his reach. 

Every patent issued should be self-interpreting ; 
its true scope and character should be exhibited on 
its face, and not require the interpretation of a skilled 
expert. A professional schemer always tries to get 
a patent which appears oh its face to cover more 
than it actually does — a deceptive patent. But if he 
is compelled to say in his specification what he does 
/^^/ claim, how much of what he shows in the drawing 
belongs to a prior patentee, how much belongs to the 
public, — and all this can be done in the most brief 
terms, a single sentence generally sufficing, — the wings 
of the schemer would be clipped. 



The victimizing of inventors themselves, by the 
issuing to them of patents, of the character and scope of 
which they have little or no knowledge, is a more for- 
midable evil than all, and one which demands prompt 
and decisive action at the hands of the authorities. 



io6 Patents and the Useful Arts. 

Of the two hundred and fifty inventors who receive 
official notice of allowances of patents weekly, how 
many are there who know what kinds of patents 
they are to receive on the payment of the second fee 
($20) ? 

Of the two hundred and fifty inventors who 
become patentees weekly, how many are there who 
have a wholesome knowledge of the true character of 
the patent deeds which they receive ? 

I shall be giving a very liberal estimate when I 
answer these questions by saying not more than 
twenty-five per cent. 

There is no reason why any inventor who has 
received a notice of the allowance of a patent for his 
invention, should be ignorant of the kind of patent he 
will obtain on the payment of the second fees ; there is 
no reason why any inventor, who obtains a patent, 
should be ignorant of its true character. 

That the majority of patentees are thus ignorant, 
however, is as certain as that much of the unpopu- 
larity of patents is due to this ignorance. 



It is no part of the duty of the authorities of the 
Patent Office to notify inventors of the purport and 
scope of the claims which have been allowed. The 
Patent Office cannot undertake to counsel inventors 
on these points, all that it can do is to examine the 
applications and decide on the patentability of inven- 
tions, as described and claimed by the applicants. 



Mischiefs and Remedies. 107 

Without desiring to dictate to patent solicitors how 
they should perform their duties, I cannot resist this 
opportunity of giving a little advice to inventors, and 
of expressing my belief that if they were always 
treated with candor, and made participants in the 
prosecution of their applications for patents, there 
would soon be less ignorance among them than there 
is as to the true nature of patent property. 

Inventors may save themselves from the many 
pitfalls which beset them as patentees, and may 
acquire much salutary information by observing the 
following instructions : — 

Never sign blank petitions for applications for 
patents ; insist upon examining the specification and 
drawings before the application is signed and filed, 
noting especially the character of the claims. You 
may be told that you cannot understand them ; but 
you have at least a right to try and understand them, 
and if you cannot, your attorney ought to explain 
them. Keep a copy of the specification, or at least of 
the claims ; and bear in mind that the protection you 
acquire by a patent v/ill depend upon the claims which 
are allowed. If you ask the Government for less pro- 
tection than you are entitled to, the officers of the Gov- 
ernment cannot undertake to notify you that you have 
not done yourself justice ; they will take care that you do 
not get more than you are entitled to, but it is your 
own fault if you ask for less. After your application is 
filed, insist upon knowing every step taken in the prose- 
cution of the case. If the application is rejected, in 
view of prior patents, insist upon having a copy of the 



io8 Patents and the Useful Arts. 

official letter and particulars of the prior patents re- 
ferred to, and of such changes as the attorney proposes 
to make ; you have a right to an opinion of your own 
as to the character of the references, which may not 
have the bearing on your case which the Examiner 
or even the attorney supposes. Bear in mind that 
the prosecution of the case, after rejection, is the most 
important duty of all, for any neglect might result in 
the granting of a patent with narrower claims than you 
are entitled to. When the case is allowed, insist upon 
having a copy of the allowed claims, which, with the 
copy of the originals, and of letters of rejection and 
references, will give you a pretty clear idea of the 
kind of patent you will receive on the payment of 
the second fees, and you will have acquired some 
information of the character of patent property gene- 
rally, as well as of your own patent property in par- 
ticular. 

No respectable attorney can refuse to comply with 
such demands as I have mentioned ; indeed, the prac- 
tice is adopted to a greater or less extent in all our 
cities ; it is a practice which experienced inventors 
and those who have most at stake in patent property 
insist upon, and it is a practice w^hich can be carried 
out with comparatively slight effort, — it is an honest 
and wholesome practice. 



Let us note for a moment the evil effects of a weak 
patent in the hands of a man who is ignorant of its 
weakness. 



Mischiefs and Remedies. 109 

The inventor is always sanguine : much of his 
time has been consumed in devising the machine for 
which he intends to ask a patent, his neighbors take 
an interest in it, he looks forward to ample reward, 
perhaps to a fortune ; he cannot believe that any one 
has been in advance of him in this particular device ; 
he gets his patent, is more dazzled by its aspect than 
concerned about its contents, he has received no papers 
by which he, or those whom he might desire to consult^ 
can interpret the deed. 

He leaves his employment, or gives up some busi- 
ness, by which he has supported his family ; relatives 
and neighbors advance money to help in the manu- 
facture ; he sells an interest in his patent for more 
money, and finally gets the machine into the market 
and there is every appearance of future prosperity. 
Some rival manufacturer notes this, steals the inven- 
tion, adopts all the improvements, acquired by indus- 
trious tests, and sets the patentee at defiance; the 
latter becomes indignant, takes legal advice, and it is 
suddenly discovered that the patent is a fraud, and the 
patentee finds himself in debt, his original business 
ruined by neglect, and is altogether in a deplorable 
condition. Maybe, after his efforts and borrowings to 
put the machine into market, he finds that he is tres- 
passing on the rights of others. 

As this sort of thing is and has been going on all 
the time, in all parts of the country, it is not to be won- 
dered at that patents are looked upon with suspicion,, 
and that inventors are mistrusted. 



no Patents and the Useful Arts. 

While this state of affairs may be in a measure 
attributed to the deceptive appearance of patent deeds 
and especially of the title-page, it has been largely 
brought about by patent solicitors. 

It must be borne in mind that all sorts of people 
liave adopted the profession of soliciting patents ; there 
is as yet, unfortunately, no law to prevent incompe- 
tent men from volunteering to advise inventors. The 
lawyer is an officer of the court in which he practices* 
by right of admission to the bar after examination as 
to his competency. The physician can point to his 
diploma, w^hich is some proof of his competency. But 
any one can become a patent solicitor by the simple 
adoption of the title. 

It is not to be wondered at, therefore, that no pro- 
fession in the world contains such a heterogeneous 
collection of good, bad, and indifferent members, as 
that of soliciting patents. 

While there has always been a demand for the 
•services of solicitors of a higher grade, whose fees are 
commensurate with the ability and honesty with which 
their duties are performed, there has always been a 
struggle among those of a lower grade for the patron- 
age of inventors, and competition resulted in the offer 
of services for all sorts of prices, culminating at last 
in the contingent, or no-patent-no-pay system. 

If all patents were in quality alike, if applications 
for patents were equivalent to applications for pen- 
sions, in which the mere clerical duty of filling up 
printed forms is involved, there might be some shadow 
of an excuse for this kind of practice. 



Mischiefs and Remedies. i T r 

Unfortunately there is a large portion of the com- 
munity who really think that there is very little differ- 
ence in the quality of patents, and that the duty of 
procuring them is a mere matter of form. 

The procuring of patents is thus placed on a level 
with the obtaining of objects by hunting for them at 
the expense of physical exertion, with a little chance 
to give excitement to the occupation, like the catching 
of fish, the shooting of ducks, etc., for which there is. 
generally a stipulated market price, and which are 
not paid for until they are caught. 

The quality of patents, the whole interests of the 
inventor, depend upon the intelligence, experience, and 
faithfulness which are brought to bear on preparing and 
prosecuting the application, and especially on the 
candor of the attorney in keeping his client informed 
as to the progress of the application, and advising 
him of the true condition of the patent which is 
obtained, and of his rights under the patent. Chance 
or luck has nothing to do with this duty, the proper 
fulfillment of which requires intellectual labor and 
honesty. 

The contingent fee practice was denounced 
by Commissioner Fisher in appropriate terms in 
his report for 1869 ; it is a bad system, bad for 
inventors, bad for the Patent Office, bad for the public. 
It has been one means of flooding the country with 
bad patents, creating discontent among inventors, and 
prejudice against patents in the public mind, and has 
degraded a profession, in the proper exercise of which 



112 Patents and the Use ftd Arts. 

diversified talents, prudence, experience, and integ- 
rity are demanded. 



In far too many cases the applicant never knows 
what sort of a patent he is going to have until he 
gets the deed, and it may be long after that, and 
after he has spent his own money, and borrowed from 
others, to manufacture the invention, that he learns 
how valueless the patent is. He may write indig- 
nantly to his agent, from whom, however, he can 
get very little comfort, or he may write directly to 
the Patent Office, complaining of the manner in 
which he has been treated, but the Office is help- 
less. A patent has been granted, for what^the appli- 
cant has asked for through his agent : if the agent 
has not asked for enough — has not prosecuted the 
•case properly — the Office is not responsible. 

To give a man a patent without instructing him 
as to its true purport, or without ever giving him the 
means by which he can form some opinion as to its 
scope, is antagonistic to all our ideas of fair profes- 
sional practice. 

The records of the Patent Office will show that 
complaints about the defective character of pat- 
ents are made daily, and so serious has the matter 
become, that some interference on the part of the 
Government is imperatively demanded. It has 
been suggested that the Commissioner should mail 
-directly, to every applicant for a patent, whose 
case has been allowed, a copy of the claims on 



Mischiefs and Kennedies. 113 

which the allowance is based. This would have a 
beneficial effect, for the copy would at least give the 
applicant some idea of the sort of patent he will 
receive on payment of the fees, or it will enable him 
to consult others who may have more knowledge 
than himself of patent matters. 

Solicitors who perform their duties properly, 
would not object to this, and if any men objected 
to it, it would only be evidence of their desire to 
shirk their duty. 

The issue of worthless patents, however, is not 
entirely due to the ignorance of inventors. 

There are many professional schemers who know 
a good patent from a bad one, and a wretchedly weak 
claim from a substantial one ; these men are always in 
a hurry and instruct their attorneys to get a patent with 
any kind of a claim ; they want to get the patent 
cheaply and to trade with it, and they are prepared to 
pass off a bad one for a good one, just as readily as 
any other unscrupulous traders pass off spurious articles 
on their customers. 

Against the wiles of these parties, the only effi- 
cient guard is to develop every conceivable means of 
educating the public at large in regard to patent mat- 
ters. 



Another way of remedying the evils above re- 
ferred to is that suggested by the Commissioner, of 
dispensing with models in all but exceptional cases. 
Models are rarely accurate representations of the 



114 Patents and the Useful Arts. 

machines or devices for which inventors seek patents, 
they are not necessary for the use of the Patent 
Office, they occupy room which might be devoted to 
much better purpose ; but they are very convenient 
things for enabHng attorneys with very Hmited acquire- 
ments to perform their duties in a very chimsy way. 

A drawing is made from the model, all the 
defects appear in the drawing, some kind of speci- 
fication is easily written by a very inexperienced 
hand, with the model before him. 

A man who cannot perform his duties without 
the aid of a model is not fit to be a patent solicitor ; 
abolish the model system, and we shall soon see an 
improvement in the class of professional men who 
undertake to advise inventors. It is to be hoped that 
the petition of inventors, now before Congress, to 
do away with models, may have the effect of direct- 
ing our legislators to this important subject. 



The Abuse of Reissues of Patents. 1 1 5 



XIV. 

THE ABUSE OF REISSUES OF PATENTS. 

A MERCIFUL clause in our patent law is that relat- 
ing to reissues, which allows the patentee to repair 
his patent, not by the introduction of new matter, 
but by such alterations of the specification and 
claims as the defects, in the original deed, and the 
state of the art when the patent was granted, may 
suggest. 

It would be a mistake to deprive of this right a 
patentee, who, through no direct fault of his own, has 
obtained a patent which does not afford the protec- 
tion he was entitled to. 

It has been said that a patentee should be held 
responsible for his own acts ; that the protection he 
asked for was defined by himself; that if he did not 
ask for better protection or employ a competent man 
to make the request in proper form, no one is to 
blame but himself; that it is not the duty of our law- 
makers to legislate for the benefit of the ignorant 
and careless. 

This is not an argument which can find favor in 
these enlightened times with men of broad views, 
who would let every man have a chance of repairing 
the errors he may have inadvertently committed, pro- 

8 



Ii6 Patents and the Useful Arts. 

viding this privilege does not injuriously affect the 
public. 

Like other beneficent measures, however, this 
privilege of reissuing patents has been grossly abused, 
and has brought our patent system into such dis- 
repute, that remedial legislation is imperatively 
demanded. 

Let us note some of the evils resulting from the 
abuse of this clause of the law. 

A patent, or series of patents, relating to some 
special branch of industry, has been obtained, and 
capital has been invested in the manufacture of the 
patented articles. Now in these days the simplest 
objects of every-day use cannot be economically 
manufactured without an outlay for machinery and 
appliances, and for carrying into effect a proper sys- 
tem of division of labor ; the public demands not 
only new things but better things and cheaper things, 
and this demand can only be supplied by patents, 
and by the capital which patents invite. The remark- 
ably cheap products of our workshops at the Centen- 
nial Exhibition were matters of surprise and aston- 
ishment to our visitors from abroad, where labor is 
much less expensive than in our own country. 

The factory, based on patents, is in full and suc- 
cessful operation, the proprietor is receiving a fair 
interest for the capital invested, and the public has 
the benefit of cheaper and better articles in return 
for the protection afforded by the Government, in the 
shape of patents. 



The Abuse of Reis sties of Patents. 117 

The success of the establishment cannot remain 
a secret, and it attracts the attention of a patent spec- 
ulator, whose first move is to try and get hold of some 
patent preceding those which are owned by the pro- 
prietors of the establishment. Failing in discovering 
a patent to exactly meet the case, he takes an excur- 
sion to Washington, probably takes the advice of a 
solicitor there, to whom he explains what he wants, 
and together they go on a hunting expedition through 
the records and model halls, until they find some 
model of a patent which they think can be doctored 
by reissue to resemble a subsequent prominent patent 
of the manufacturer. The model has, perhaps, long 
since been almost forgotten by the inventor himself, 
and has remained on the shelves of the model room^ 
without attracting any notice. By cunning manoeu- 
vres, the patent to which the model appertains is pur- 
chased from the owner, perhaps for a mere song, and 
then commences the operation of reissuing ; the attor- 
ney has the copy of the recently discovered patent 
before him, and also a copy of that for the coveted 
machine of the successful manufacturer, and he is 
told that he must reissue the first patent so as to 
cover, or to use a common phrase, wipe out the 
second. 

The most ingenious devices are adopted to bring 
this about, — the attorney receives high fees, and the 
Examiner is cajoled by all sorts of assertions into allow- 
ing claims which may appear to be innocent enough. 

The reissued patent is shown to the manufacturer, 
and he may be induced to purchase it for a large sum 



Ii8 Patents and the Useful Arts. 

in order to avoid expensive litigation. Now this 
money is taken from the pubHc to enrich the specula- 
tor, the non-producer, for to make up for the with- 
drawal of capital the price of the product is increased. 
Perhaps the manufacturer resists the demand made on 
him and costly litigation ensues, the economy of the 
manufacture is disturbed, and the public and manu- 
facturer suffer for the benefit of the owner of the reis- 
sued patent. 

A lot of these speculators, lawyers and patent 
solicitors sometimes among them, club together to 
buy up a patent or patents relating to something in 
general use in different parts of the country, subject 
their purchases to the reissuing process, establish 
headquarters, and, with a great flourish, proceed to 
levy on manufacturers who were ignorant of the exist- 
ence of the patent which has been reissued, and which 
would doubtless have been forgotten, but for the keen 
eyes of these speculators. 

The evil wrought by this system is incalculable, 
it not only disturbs the economy of manufactures, but 
brings disgrace on the whole patent system. A reissue 
of this character cannot promote the progress of the 
useful arts, it must necessarily obstruct that progress. 

It may be said that in the hands of a rival manu- 
facturer the reissue might create a competition which 
would be advantageous to the public, it might have 
the effect of reducing the cost of the product for a short 
time perhaps ; but manufacturers are generally cun- 
ning enough to join hands eventually, and agree to 
keep up prices, as the saying is, and this keeping up 



The Abuse of Reissues of Patents. 119 

of prices means charging such sums for the product as 
will pay them for the cost of litigation. 

The evil has at last attracted the attention of our 
legislators, and many remedies have been suggested. 

One proposition is, to abolish reissues altogether, 
which would be unjust to honest patentees, who 
want honest reissues. Another plan is to forbid the 
reissue of a patent after it is five years old, but this 
again might work a great injustice to an honest 
inventor, who has been working under his patent 
for several years, to his own advantage, and that of 
the public, and suddenly discovers that to meet the 
inroads of sharpers he must obtain a reissue. 

There appears to be a more satisfactory way of 
remedying the difficulty. 

Compel an applicant for a reissued patent to file 
with his application a statement, under oath, setting 
forth clearly wherein the patent is imperfect and 
defective ; compel him also to present the testimony 
of disinterested witnesses, setting forth what efforts, 
if any, have been made to introduce the invention 
into the market ; let the Examiner to whom the case 
is referred prepare a report, to be submitted to the 
Commissioner, who, alone, should have the right to 
grant the reissue. 

If it shall appear to the Commissioner that the 
claims presented with the reissue might have been 
granted when the invention was originally patented, 
and that reasonable efforts have been made to intro- 
duce the invention into the market, let the reissue be 
granted ; but should it appear that, even if he might 



I20. Patents and the Useful Arts. 

otherwise be entitled to the reissue, he has made no 
effort to introduce the invention, or has only made a 
late effort for the purpose of securing a reissue, then 
the application ought to be denied. 

The law favors the industrious, and will always 
make a distinction between the active and the indolent 
inventor. 

The man who obtains a patent and takes no 
steps to develop the invention and carry it into 
practical effect, is not worthy of much consideration — 
he has contributed very little to the progress of the 
useful arts ; and the man who, with a dead patent, is 
actuated by jealousy of a rival and more active 
inventor to resuscitate that dead patent, and by a 
deceptive reissue converts it into a weapon to harass 
his rival, is the w^orst kind of obstructionist, and 
should find no favor. 

The plan suggested above is substantially the 
same as that formerly adopted in treating applications 
for an extension of patents, which had been granted 
for fourteen years. It was the invariable rule for the 
Commissioner to demand proof of activity in intro- 
ducing the invention into public use, before the 
application could be favorably considered. 



The model halls of the Patent Office are the 
special hunting grounds for speculators, who resort 
to this reissuing business, and models have been 
altered and distorted, so as to form the foundation for 
reissued patents, and on the strength of what appears 



The Abuse of Reissues of Patents. 121 

in the model, or what is, by some rascality, made to 
appear in it, reissued patents have been granted 
for what the original patentee never contemplated. 
Of course, every such reissue is a fraud on the Gov- 
ernment and the public, and a curse to manufac- 
turers who are pursuing a legitimate business. 

It is still the custom to permit applicants for 
reissued patents to claim all that appears in the 
model, which forms no part of the patent, and with 
which the public is not familiar. 

It is gratifying to know that the Commissioner 
of Patents, in his recent report, and in his suggestions 
to the Senate Committee on patents, recommends 
that this abominable custom be abolished ; indeed, he 
recommends the abandonment of the model system, 
excepting in very special cases. 

Two-thirds of the models in the Office are abor- 
tions, and better calculated to distort the imagination 
than to convey any clear and precise idea of the 
machine or device they misrepresent. 

Models are of no use to the Examiners, they are 
a useless tax on inventors, and the solicitor of 
patents who cannot do without them has no business 
in the profession. 



There is no difference of opinion among the 
best authorities as regards the evil attending the 
reissuing of patents as now practised, but any such 
radical change as would prevent ihe honest repairing 
of a bad patent would be a great misfortune. 



122 Patents and the Useful Arts, 

It is believed that the plan suggested above, of 
abolishing models altogether, excluding all reference 
to such models as exist from reissue applications in 
future, and surrounding such applications with require- 
ments rendering exceedingly difficult the obtaining of 
unjust reissues, would be desirable amendments of 
the present system. 

Another class of speculators of a lower grade, 
the peddlers who pass off weak patents for substan- 
tial ones, are not so numerous as they formerly were, a 
certain sign that the public is being slowly educated to 
a proper understanding of patent property ; — when the 
means suggested above of completing this education 
have been carried into effect, the peddling of bad 
patents will soon cease to be profitable. 



In a bill now before Congress, it is proposed that 
a tax of $50 shall be levied on every patent when it 
is four years old, and another tax of $100 when it is 
nine years old ; the patent being considered as aban- 
doned on failure to pay these taxes. This would 
appear to be a wise measure, as it will abolish many 
worthless patents which are in the way of actual 
improvements — are positive obstructions, and might 
be used for the worst purposes. 

Other proposed modifications of the law have been 
recently considered by the Committees of the Senate 
and House of Representatives ; some of them appear 
to be based on the supposition that inventing should 
be considered a penal offense ; others, again, appear 



The Abuse of Reissues of Patents. 125 

to be of a salutary character, but it will be out of 
place to discuss them here, especially as they have 
received the attention of learned and able men, whose 
views have been published. 



I have endeavored, in a sketchy way, to show 
in the foregoing pages how almost from the very 
dawn of practically applied science, there has been 
the most intimate relationship between patents, the 
progress of the useful arts, and the advancement 
of civilization ; how the relationship can be sustained 
and even more closely knit, by prudent and simple 
measures directed against the evils of our patent sys- 
tem, where they exist, and how fatal to our future pros- 
perity would be the rude severing of the alliance, by 
a removal of the incentive to invent. We know what 
this incentive has done for us in the past. Who can 
predict its results in the future ? 

*' Whoever imagines that, because so many inven- 
tions and so many improvements in machinery have 
been made, there remains little else to be discov- 
ered, has but a feeble conception of the infinitude and 
vastness of mechanical powers, or of the unlimited 



124 Patents and the Useful Arts. 

reach of science. Much as has been discovered, infin- 
itely more remains unrevealed. The ingenuity of 
man is exploring a region without limits, and delving 
in a mine whose treasures are exhaustless." ** Neither 
are all the mysteries of nature unfolded, nor the mind 
tired in the pursuit of them.'* 



Supplement. 125 



SUPPLEMENT. 

Just as the foregoing pages were leaving the 
hands of the printer, the writer received a copy of a 
report, submitted to the Senate by Senator Wadleigh , 
of the Committee on Patents, to accompany Bill 300. 

As this very able report was prepared after "a 
long public hearing, during which arguments were 
presented on the whole subject of the patent law," the 
following extracts will be worthy of the reader's atten- 
tion : 

" In coming to a result, the committee have been 
impressed with the importance and value of the patent 
system in promoting the progress of the useful arts. 
Those nations which have most excelled in the extent 
of their manufactures and in the wealth derived from 
them, which have carried the industrial arts to the 
highest perfection, are the nations which have pos- 
sessed and have developed efficient patent systems. 
Those regions which exhibit bodies of the most highly 
skilled and most intelligent workmen, are the regions 
which have been longest and most affected by the 
educating and stimulating effects of the law reaching 
the ranks of the actual working classes. The indus- 
trial arts have grown as and where the patents have 
most grown, not only as between different countries, 
but as between different parts of the same country. In 



126 Patents and the Useful Arts. 

the United States most of the patents were taken out 
in New England, and most of the manufacturing was 
done there thirty years ago ; to-day the six great 
Western States take out fifty per cent, more patents 
than New England, and surpass it in the value of their 
manufactured products. We have come to be a great 
manufacturing nation. As long ago as 1870 the yearly 
product of our manufacturing establishments was nearly 
twice the value of all our agricultural products, and 
the wages of the operatives were greater than the labor 
earnings of all farmers and farm-laborers, including 
their board. The manufacturing product and wages 
exceeded those of agriculture even in the great corn 
and grain growing States of the West and Northwest, 
while our exports of industrial products exceed our 
exports of breadstuifs. That we are equaling and sur- 
passing England in excellence and cheapness, and 
thus gradually driving her manufactures not only out 
of our own but out of neutral markets, is shown by the 
tables of exports and imports of the two countries, and 
by those facts, in the course of trade, which come to 
our daily notice. All this gain has for its essential 
condition, economy of manufacture by means of labor- 
saving machinery to compensate for the higher wages 
which prevail, and which it is desirable shall continue 
to prevail in this country. 

" Indeed, not only the experience of our own manu- 
facturers and exporters, but the universal testimony of 
the industrial writers in the English journals, and else- 
where, and of our own consuls, set forth in the "com- 
mercial intercourse" appendix to the papers relating 



Supplement. 1 27 

to foreign relations, transmitted to Congress with the 
President's message of last year, show that this prog- 
ress is owing to the improvement in accuracy and 
quality, as well as the diminution of cost of manufac- 
ture due to our improved machinery, and abundant 
instances of this have been furnished in industries 
whose development is directly due to recently invented 
and still patented machinery." 

" These and many other considerations show that 
the patent-system is one of the great factors in our indus- 
trial progress, and it is significant that the Commis- 
sioners of foreign nations present at our Centennial 
Exhibition, struck with our superiority in machinery 
and mechanical tools, attributed it in large part to the 
fostering effect of that system. They advised their 
governments to take steps to create or modify their 
patent law^s to conform more to ours, the distinctive 
feature of which is that it is so framed and so adminis- 
tered that its stimulus reaches every workshop. Nearly 
all of our mechanical inventions are made by working- 
men ; and thus we have not only acquired a large 
mass of useful inventions, but have trained the whole 
body of our workmen to use their brains as well as 
their hands." 

" It has been abundantly shown also that the direct 
effect of the system is to improve the condition of the 
workman. Statistics from the census and figures from 
the books of those engaged in various branches of 
industry, prove that with the introduction of improved 
machinery the hours of labor have been shortened, 
and the daily rate of wages raised, while the cost of 



128 Patents and the Useful Arts, 

the product to the consumer has been lessened. The 
day of the workman has been made more valuable to 
the community, and represents a larger and more valu- 
able product ; and he has consequently, and in fact, 
enjoyed more of the comforts and conveniences which 
the higher value of his labor in proportion to the 
things he desires has enabled him to acquire. Mean- 
time the demand for labor, as a whole, has increased. 
Financial depression affects everything to-day ; but 
looking at the community at periods of ten years 
apart, we find that during the period of the great 
growth in inventions, 1850 to 1870, while our popula- 
tion increased sixty-seven per cent., the workmen 
employed in manufacturing more than doubled, those 
employed in steam transportation increased many 
fold, while in the great grain-raising States, most 
affected by the introduction of labor-saving agricul- 
tural machinery, the farmers and farm-laborers more 
than doubled. So much does the cheapened product 
increase the demand and the ability to consume. 

"The consumer has gained not merely by the 
diminished cost due to the use of the invention after 
the expiration of the patent, but by an immediate 
cheapening, for it has been shown by figures drawn 
from many branches of industry that the royalties 
commonly received seldom exceed five per cent, of 
the actual saving immediately realized ; so that, if an 
invention cheapens the product one dollar, the 
patentee generally receives ^n^ or ten cents of it, and 
the community at large gains the rest. 



Supplement. 129 

"The workman finds that by means of his patent 
which he can either use or sell, he is enabled to hold 
his own to a greater or less degree against the capital- 
ist in industrial competition ; and, more than all, the 
protection which the patent gives a patent-owner in 
the results attained induces him, and is all that will 
induce him, to expend the time and the money — often 
several hundred thousand dollars upon a single 
machine — in perfecting the invention, embodying it in 
a practically useful machine, and introducing it to 
public use. 

"The committee are therefore convinced that the 
framers of the Constitution were wise in their judgment 
when, in intrusting to Congress ' the power to promote 
science and useful arts,' they gave them only one 
means for doing it, namely, 'securing for limited 
times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to 
their respective writings and discoveries.' No change 
should be made in the patent law to weaken the 
inducement which, in its ordinary and normal opera- 
tion in the common transactions of business, it offers 
to those who will successfully invent, and to those 
who, by perseverance and expenditure, will perfect 
inventions and the machines in which they are 
embodied, and push their introduction so as to put 
the public in possession of perfectly working machines 
or a perfectly finished product." 



INDEX. 

Page 
INTRODUCTION „_ 7 

I. 

Early Practical Science and Early Patents 9 

II. 

Inventors and Their Motives 17 

III. 

The Steam-Engine — Early Patentees - 21 

IV. 

Textile Machinery — Early Inventors and Patentees 28 

V. 
Early Patents for the Manufacture of Iron and Steel 35 

VI. 

Early Patents and Manufactures in the United States ". 38 

vli. 

Useful Arts in France Prior to 1800 50 

VIII. 
Patent Laws in Europe 1 54 

IX. 

Patents and Manufactures in the United States after 1800 61 

X. 

About Inventors and Their Trials 73 

XI. 

The United States Patent Office— Its Early History 82 

XII. 

The Examining System — Its Past and Present Condition 85 

XIII. 

Present Mischiefs Attending Patents and Remedies Therefor 98 

XIV. 

The Abuse of Reissues of Patents 115 

SUPPLEMENT 125 



